The HANAIN project is an interdisciplinary activity, involving researchers from the University of Messina and the University of Salento with extensive experience in medicinal chemistry, virology and bioinformatics. The project is part of a broad research program funded by the INF-ACT Foundation to address the urgent need for novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of emerging infectious diseases in humans, pursuing the so-called “One Health” approach.
Influenza viruses can cause contagious respiratory diseases in humans and several species of mammals and birds. Influenza viruses belong to the Orthomyxoviridae family and are classified into influenza viruses A, B, C, and D. Among these, influenza viruses A and B (IAV, IBV) cause respiratory illnesses ranging from mild to severe seasonal epidemics.
IAVs, known to cause pandemics, are classified based on the proteins hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), which decorate the surface of the viral particles.
Effective antiviral agents could generally provide valuable benefits as first-line therapy against IAV pandemics as an alternative therapeutic strategy to vaccination, which generally represents the best method for protecting immunocompetent individuals from morbidity and mortality. However, vaccine therapy tends to be less effective due to the effects of viral strain variants.
The HANAIN project aims to contribute to the search for novel inhibitors of the viral proteins haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) to combat influenza A viruses (IAV).
HA and NA play a critical role in the virus ability to infect host cells and propagate.
The productive integration of computational methods and experimental procedures represents a modern, efficient, and environmentally friendly approach to drug discovery of preclinical candidates. HANAIN research project acts through an interdisciplinary methodology to ensure the robustness of the results; The use of a targeted screening campaign on existing drug libraries and an in-house small molecule collection will improve the project’s sustainability by reducing costs and environmental impact. The effective antiviral activity of the selected compounds will be assessed using specific HA/NA inhibition assays on non-infectious viruses.
WORKFLOW
Effective integration of computational approaches with experimental procedures
- Structure- and Ligand-based approaches for developing pharmacophore models
- Virtual Screening and Repurposing protocols
- Biological studies for the development of antiviral agents