Scientists enlist engineered protein to battle the MERS virus

A custom-engineered protein destroyed the deadly virus in the lab; could become a sweeping anti-viral in medicine and farming. In June 2012, a 60 year-old man with flu-like symptoms walked into a private hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Two weeks later, he died from multiple organ failure, becoming the first victim of a mysterious virus that came to be known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified MERS as an urgent threat with no vaccine or treatment in sight. This could change thanks to a new anti-viral tool, developed by University of Toronto researchers. Writing in the journal PLoS Pathogens, the team led by Professor Sachdev Sidhu, of the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and Department of Molecular Genetics, describe how they turned ubiquitin, a staple protein in every cell, into a drug capable of thwarting MERS in cultured human cells. Because the technology...