antiviral-therapy
Antiviral therapy encompasses treatments and strategies designed to prevent or control viral infections in plants. Plant viruses cause significant damage to crops and wild plant populations by reducing yields, compromising plant health, and affecting overall productivity, making antiviral interventions critical for agriculture and plant conservation. These approaches include chemical treatments, genetic resistance breeding, and biological control methods that help protect plants from devastating viral diseases.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-02-19
Researchers developed polyvalent guide RNAs that allow a CRISPR-Cas13 system to simultaneously target multiple sequences of human coronavirus, achieving better viral suppression in human lung cells than traditional approaches while reducing off-target effects.
Polyvalent guide RNAs (pgRNAs) targeting multiple viral sequences achieved significantly greater viral suppression against hCoV-229E compared to single-target guide RNAs, even when multiple single-target gRNAs were used together
pgRNAs demonstrated reduced collateral RNase activity compared to single-target counterparts, indicating improved specificity and potential safety advantages for therapeutic use
The pgRNA design and validation pipeline was successfully demonstrated in human lung epithelial cells, extending prior proof-of-concept work from plant viral infection models