Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

Learn about the flu shot, COVID-19 vaccine, and our masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

Ethacridine inhibits SARS-CoV-2 by inactivating viral particles in cellular models. bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology Li, X., Lidsky, P., Xiao, Y., Wu, C. T., GarciaKnight, M., Yang, J., Nakayama, T., Nayak, J. V., Jackson, P. K., Andino, R., Shu, X. 2020

Abstract

More than a million people have now died from COVID-19, because of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Currently, the FDA has approved remdesivir, an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 replication, to treat COVID-19, though very recent data from WHO showed little if any COVID19 protective effect. Here we report that ethacridine, a safe and potent antiseptic use in humans, effectively inhibits SARS-CoV-2, at very low concentrations (EC 50 ~ 0.08 µ M). Ethacridine was identified through a high-throughput screening of an FDA-approved drug library in living cells using a fluorescent assay. Interestingly, the main mode of action of ethacridine is to inactivate virus particles, preventing binding to the host cells. Thus, our work has identified a potent drug with a distinct mode of action against SARS-CoV-2.

View details for DOI 10.1101/2020.10.28.359042

View details for PubMedID 33140048

View details for PubMedCentralID PMC7605555