Cho Won-Kyung, Ma Jin Yeul
Korean Medicine (KM) Application Center, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, 70 Cheomdan-ro, Dong-gu, Daegu 41062, Republic of Korea.
Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Aug 5;26(15):7572. doi: 10.3390/ijms26157572.
Conessine is a steroidal alkaloid found in many plants. The pharmacological efficacies of conessine on various ailments, including antiviral effects against Zika, Herpes, and Coronavirus, were reported. However, the effect of conessine on the influenza virus was still unknown. In this study, conessine exhibited a strong inhibitory effect against influenza A virus (IAV) infection. We examined the effect of conessine on IAV using green fluorescent protein (GFP)-expressing Influenza A/PR8/34 and wild-type A/PR8/34. The fluorescence-activated cell sorting, fluorescence microscopy, cytopathic effect analysis, and plaque assay demonstrated that conessine significantly inhibits IAV infection. Consistently, immunofluorescence results showed that conessine strongly reduces the expression of IAV proteins. The time-of-drug-addition assay revealed that conessine could affect the viral attachment and entry into the cells upon IAV infection. Further, conessine eradicated the virus before binding to the cells in the early stage of viral infection. Our results suggest that conessine has strong anti-viral efficacy against IAV infection and could be developed as an anti-influenza viral agent.
锥丝碱是一种存在于多种植物中的甾体生物碱。有报道称锥丝碱对多种疾病具有药理作用，包括对寨卡病毒、疱疹病毒和冠状病毒的抗病毒作用。然而，锥丝碱对流感病毒的作用仍不清楚。在本研究中，锥丝碱对甲型流感病毒（IAV）感染表现出强烈的抑制作用。我们使用表达绿色荧光蛋白（GFP）的甲型流感病毒/PR8/34和野生型A/PR8/34来研究锥丝碱对IAV的影响。荧光激活细胞分选、荧光显微镜检查、细胞病变效应分析和空斑试验表明，锥丝碱能显著抑制IAV感染。同样，免疫荧光结果显示锥丝碱能强烈降低IAV蛋白的表达。药物添加时间试验表明，锥丝碱可在IAV感染时影响病毒的附着和进入细胞。此外，锥丝碱在病毒感染早期结合细胞之前就能清除病毒。我们的结果表明，锥丝碱对IAV感染具有强大的抗病毒功效，有望开发成为一种抗流感病毒药物。
