Khan Imran, Hatiboglu Mustafa Aziz
Department of Molecular Biology, Beykoz Institute of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Bezmialem Vakif University, Yalıköy St., Beykoz, Istanbul, Turkey.
Department of Molecular Biology, Beykoz Institute of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Bezmialem Vakif University, Yalıköy St., Beykoz, Istanbul, Turkey; Department of Neurosurgery, Bezmialem Vakif University Medical School, Vatan Street, Fatih, Istanbul, Turkey.
Med Hypotheses. 2020 Nov;144:110009. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110009. Epub 2020 Jun 19.
The outbreak of Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) represents a global threat to the public healthcare. The viral spike (S) glycoprotein is the key molecule for viral entry through interaction with angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor molecules present on the cell membranes. Moreover, it has been established that COVID-19 interacts and infects brain cells in humans via ACE2. Therefore in the light of these known facts we hypothesized that viral S protein molecule may bind to the other overexpressed receptor molecules in glioma cells and may play some role in glioma tumorogenesis. Thus we leverage docking analysis (HEX and Z-DOCK) between viral S protein and epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR), vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR) and hepatocyte growth factor receptors (HGFR/c-MET) to investigate the oncogenic potential of COVID-19. Our findings suggested higher affinity of Viral S protein towards EGFR and VEGFR. Although, the data presented is preliminary and need to be validated further via molecular dynamics studies, however it paves platform to instigate further investigations on this aspect considering the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic in oncogenic perspective.
2019年新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）的爆发对全球公共卫生构成了威胁。病毒刺突（S）糖蛋白是病毒通过与细胞膜上存在的血管紧张素转换酶2（ACE2）受体分子相互作用进入细胞的关键分子。此外，已经证实COVID-19通过ACE2与人类脑细胞相互作用并感染脑细胞。因此，鉴于这些已知事实，我们推测病毒S蛋白分子可能与胶质瘤细胞中其他过度表达的受体分子结合，并可能在胶质瘤肿瘤发生中发挥一定作用。因此，我们利用病毒S蛋白与表皮生长因子受体（EGFR）、血管内皮生长因子受体（VEGFR）和肝细胞生长因子受体（HGFR/c-MET）之间的对接分析（HEX和Z-DOCK）来研究COVID-19的致癌潜力。我们的研究结果表明病毒S蛋白对EGFR和VEGFR具有更高的亲和力。虽然所呈现的数据是初步的，需要通过分子动力学研究进一步验证，但是考虑到COVID-19大流行在致癌方面的后果，这为在这方面开展进一步研究奠定了基础。
