There’s a lack of drugs to kill these RNA viruses 

Some of the most common and deadly viruses to humans are RNA
based and have little in the way of FDA approved treatments.

To address that, a team of researchers led by the Broad
Institute of MIT and Harvard developed an antiviral agent that can
find and destroy RNA-based viruses hiding out in human
cells. 

RELATED: NEW EBOLA DRUG BREAKTHROUGH
HAS PROMISING ‘90% SURVIVAL RATE’^[1]

There’s a lack of drugs to kill these RNA viruses 

In a research report, which was published in journal
Molecular Cel^[2]l, the researchers
co-led by senior author Pardis Sabeti, a member at the Broad
Institute and a professor at Harvard
University, Catherine Freije, a graduate student at
Harvard University, and Cameron Myhrvold, a Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences postdoc, were able to turn a CRISPR RNA^[3]
cutting enzyme into an agent that can destroy the viruses including
Ebola, Zika and flu. 

The efforts on the part of the researchers comes at a time
when drugs aren’t doing enough to kill these infections. According
to the researchers, during the past 50 years,
90 clinically approved antiviral drugs have been
developed but they only treat nine diseases. The drugs don’t
reflect the fact that viral pathogens can evolve and become
resistant to current treatments. The researchers noted that only
16 viruses have vaccines that are approved by the
FDA.  

CARVER systems could fight a variety of
viruses 

The researchers had previously made the Cas13 enzyme into
a tool to cut and edit RNA and to detect viruses and bacteria in
human cells. Now they are using Cas13 or any CRISPR system to act
as an antiviral in human cells. The researchers combined the
capabilities of Cas13 into one system that in the future could
diagnose and treat these infections. The system is Called
CARVER. 

“Human viral pathogens are extremely diverse and
constantly adapting to their environment, even within a single
species of virus, which underscores both the challenge and need for
flexible antiviral platforms,” said Sabeti, who is also a Howard
Hughes Medical Institute investigator said in a press release^[4]
highlighting the research. “Our work establishes CARVER as a
powerful and rapidly programmable diagnostic and antiviral
technology for a wide variety of these viruses.”

Researchers’ tool reduced the viral RNA cells 40
fold 

To test the effectiveness of its CARVER system, the
researchers tested it in human cells that had
lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), influenza A virus
(IAV), and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Twenty-four hours
after introducing the Cas13 gene and a guide RNA into the cells,
the researchers exposed the cells to the virus^[5]. After another
24 hours, the Cas13 enzymes reduced the level of
viral RNA in the cells by as much as 40
times. 

“We envision Cas13 as a research tool to explore many
aspects of viral biology in human cells,” said Freije in the same
press release. “It could also potentially be a clinical tool, where
these systems could be used to diagnose a sample, treat a viral
infection, and measure the effectiveness of the treatment — all
with the ability to adapt CARVER quickly to deal with new or
drug-resistant viruses as they emerge.”