Potent in vitro antiviral activity of Cistus incanus extract against HIV and Filoviruses targets viral envelope proteins

Abstract

Novel therapeutic options are urgently needed to improve global treatment of virus infections. Herbal products with confirmed clinical safety features are attractive starting material for the identification of new antiviral activities. Here we demonstrate that Cistus incanus (Ci) herbal products inhibit human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in vitro. Ci extract inhibited clinical HIV-1 and HIV-2 isolates, and, importantly, a virus isolate with multiple drug resistances, confirming broad anti-HIV activity. Antiviral activity was highly selective for virus particles, preventing primary attachment of the virus to the cell surface and viral envelope proteins from binding to heparin. Bioassay-guided fractionation indicated that Ci extract contains numerous antiviral compounds and therefore has favorably low propensity to induce virus resistance. Indeed, no resistant viruses emerged during 24 weeks of continuous propagation of the virus in the presence of Ci extracts. Finally, Ci extracts also inhibited infection by virus particles pseudotyped with Ebola and Marburg virus envelope proteins, indicating that antiviral activity of Ci extract extends to emerging viral pathogens. These results demonstrate that Ci extracts show potent and broad in vitro antiviral activity against viruses that cause life-threatening diseases in humans and are promising sources of agents that target virus particles.

Qualitative evaluation of composition of the volatile fraction in commercial samples of Cistus incanus L.

“…Water extracts from C. incanus L. exhibit high antioxidant activity and influence the DNA splitting [17]. The research confirms also an antiviral in vitro activity of the preparations made of hairy rockrose against the HIV-1, HIV-2, and flu viruses [18,19].…”

Synthetic AAV/CRISPR vectors for blocking HIV‐1 expression in persistently infected astrocytes

“…Transfection was performed with Extreme Gene HP (Roche) according to the manufacturer's protocol. The HIV reporter cell line LC5‐RIC contains a red fluorescent reporter gene induced by HIV infection and was used to quantify infectious HIV titers in supernatants of transfected HEK293T cells, as described in (Kremb et al, ; Rebensburg et al, ). Briefly, 20 µl supernatant of the transfected HEK293T cells was transferred to LC5‐RIC cells that had been seeded at a density of 1 × 10 4 cells/well in 96‐well plates 24 hr earlier.…”

Anti-infective properties of Cistus incanus, a plant extract

“…Özellikle rutin antiviral tedaviye dirençli olgularda kullanıldığında viral replikasyonun engellendiği görülmüştür. Flavivirus ailesinden Ebola virusun zarf proteinlerine direkt aktivitesi de mevcuttur (8) .…”