Professor Yaakov Nachmias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found a way of keeping the novel coronavirus COVID-19 from replicating itself, reducing the danger of the virus to that of the common cold, new research published Tuesday claims.
Nachmias, founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering at Hebrew University, working in conjunction with the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, discovered that the virus is capable of causing lipids to collect in the cells of the lung, allowing it to replicate itself. This is the process that makes the manifestation of the illness so severe in many cases.
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According to Nachmias, the common anti-cholesterol drug fenofibrate, which has been in use since the 1970s and has approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, is capable of attacking the replication mechanism of COVID-19, which is what makes the virus so dangerous to the lungs.
The drug has only been tested in a laboratory setting, and not yet in clinical trials.
Nachmias' study has not yet been through the peer-review process.
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