Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as ACE2 blockers to inhibit viropexis of 2019-nCoV Spike pseudotyped virus

Abstract

The pandemic coronavirus COVID-19 affected global health from the end of 2019 to 2020 and may challenge global health in the future. There have been reports of Chloroquine (CQ) and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) used in clinical treatment. In our study, we used CCK-8 stain, flow cytometry and immunofluorescent stain to evaluated the toxicity and autophagy of CQ and HCQ respectively on ACE2 high expressed HEK293T cells (ACE2 hi cells). We further analysied the binding character of CQ and HCQ to ACE2 by molecular docking, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) assays and molecule docking, COVID-19 spike pseudotype virus was also taken to investigate the suppression viropexis effect of CQ and HCQ. Results showed that HCQ is slightly more toxic to ACE2 hi cells than CQ, both CQ and HCQ could bind to ACE2, and they also exhibit equivalent suppression effect for the entrance of COVID-19 Spike pseudotype virus into ACE2 hi cells. Our finding provides a theoretical and experimental basis for the clinical treatment of CQ and HCQ for COVID-19.

Embedding ionic hydrogel in 3D printed human-centric devices for mechanical sensing

“…Although hydrogels have many attractive features and have shown potential towards being 3D printed [19][20][21], they are still usually inspected as two-dimensional components like skin-like films and patches due to their limited structural stiffness [22] and are mostly used underwater or in vivo where they can retain water content more efficiently. While their aqueous nature results in favorable ductility and permeability, they simultaneously bound their ability to hold stable, irregular shapes, especially on larger scales [18].…”