Viral Protease Inhibitor Screening Assay Kits

Viruses widely exist in the natural environment and are the main pathogens causing various diseases in humans, plants, and animals. Viruses contain DNA or RNA genomes encapsulated by a protein coat. Both RNA and DNA viruses infect host organisms by entering and replicating in host cells. The proteolytic events catalyzed by proteases are essential for the completion of the viral infection cycle. Viral proteases are encoded by viral DNA or RNA, and the role of these enzymes is to catalyze the cleavage of specific peptide bonds in viral polyprotein precursors to produce functional products, or to catalyze the processing of structural proteins required for the assembly and morphogenesis of virus particles. Therefore, inhibition of viral proteases is one of the important strategies for the development of antiviral drugs in recent years.

Viral Protease Inhibitor Screening Assay Kits

Amerigo Scientific offers viral protease inhibitor screening assay kits based on high-throughput fluorescent assays for rapid and sensitive screening of protease inhibitors. The reporter is a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-derived protein that fluoresces only when the protease is inhibited, and the fluorescence intensity increases with the effect of inhibitors on the protease activity. The optimized report assay allows for screening of antiviral agents in biosafety level 1 (BSL1) laboratories.

Our proprietary protease inhibitor screening assay kits eliminate the possibility of false positive results compared with existing screening methods. In addition, compared with fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based screening assay, our kits are less costly and require less quantity and purity of compounds being screened. Our viral protease inhibitor screening assay kits are suitable for drug development, which can greatly improve the screening speed of new antiviral drugs.

The fluorescence intensity reflects the inhibitory effect of tested protease inhibitors, making the determination of antiviral drug activity very convenient and intuitive.

Features

• High-throughput screening at the cellular level
• High sensitivity with no false positive results
• High safety, and no virus to be used
• Low cost

Applications

Proteases are key enzymes during viral replication and assembly. Using our viral protease inhibitor screening assay kits, protease inhibitors can be effectively screened to accelerate the discovery and optimization of antiviral drugs. In addition, proteases play an important role in tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis. Our protease inhibitor screening assay allows the identification and evaluation of compounds that inhibit the activities of these key proteases, thus providing strong support for the development of novel antitumor therapies.

Performance

The viral protease inhibitor screening assay kit is designed for the discovery of protease inhibitors, enabling preliminary drug screening and quantitative analysis of the dose-effect relationship of drug candidates to calculate IC50. The following figures show the antiviral activity of a COVID-19 protease inhibitor (GC376) that measured using a SARS-CoV-2-based assay or our assay kits. The IC50 value of GC376 obtained using the live virus system was 4.69μM, while the IC50 value measured using the assay kits was 6.44μM. The IC50 values are very close, confirming the reliability of our assay kits for evaluating the antiviral efficacy of drugs.