Virucidal and Synergistic Activity of Polyphenol-Rich Extracts of Seaweeds against Measles Virus

Abstract

Although preventable by vaccination, Measles still causes thousands of deaths among young children worldwide. The discovery of new antivirals is a good approach to control new outbreaks that cause such death. In this study, we tested the antiviral activity against Measles virus (MeV) of Polyphenol-rich extracts (PPs) coming from five seaweeds collected and cultivated in Mexico. An MTT assay was performed to determine cytotoxicity effect, and antiviral activity was measured by syncytia reduction assay and confirmed by qPCR. PPs from Ecklonia arborea (formerly Eisenia arborea, Phaeophyceae) and Solieria filiformis (Rhodophyta) showed the highest Selectivity Index (SI), >3750 and >576.9 respectively. Both PPs extracts were selected to the subsequent experiments owing to their high efficacy and low cytotoxicity compared with ribavirin (SI of 11.57). The combinational effect of PPs with sulphated polysaccharides (SPs) and ribavirin were calculated by using Compusyn software. Synergistic activity was observed by combining both PPs with low concentrations of Solieria filiformis SPs (0.01 µg/mL). The antiviral activity of the best combinations was confirmed by qPCR. Virucidal assay, time of addition, and viral penetration evaluations suggested that PPs act mainly by inactivating the viral particle. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the virucidal effect of Polyphenol-rich extracts of seaweeds.

The Quest for Phenolic Compounds from Macroalgae: A Review of Extraction and Identification Methodologies

“…UAE has been also applied combined with conventional maceration [58,95,118,119]. The use of this technology as a pretreatment of different macroalgae samples before the SFE of isoflavones was also accessed [18].…”

“…Additionally, no consensus is found in the standard used for the calibration curves, which makes even more difficult the comparison between different studies. Most authors have expressed the TPC of macroalgae extracts as gallic acid [28,57,65,72,77,89,92,102,105,110,112,119,135] or phloroglucinol equivalents [104,136,137]. However, the use of other standards such as catechol [95,128] or tannic acid [54] has already been considered.…”

“…The remaining hydrophilic fraction (from the solvent of extraction) was usually treated with ethyl acetate (to which phlorotannins get partitioned), and in some cases further washed with butanol [101]. Some authors have used methanol [69] or ethanol [119] to precipitate carbohydrates, while Glombitza et al used light petroleum to precipitate the high-molecular-weight fraction of an acetylated phlorotannins extract previously partitioned into ethyl acetate [40]. Other authors have combined different LLE steps in order to characterize phenolic compounds without any further fractionation.…”

Virucidal Activity of Gold Nanoparticles Synthesized by Green Chemistry Using Garlic Extract

“…There are very few drugs available for the treatment of infections caused by RNA viruses. The SI of the approved antiviral Ribavirin has been evaluated in vitro against several viruses of human importance obtaining SI of 0.1 for ZIKV, SI = 1 for WNV, SI = 3 for DENV-1, and SI = 11.5 for measles [23,24]. Therefore AuNPs-As showed higher efficacy against measles compared to that reported for ribavirin.…”

The Potential of Algal Biotechnology to Produce Antiviral Compounds and Biopharmaceuticals

“…Among them, phlorotannins biosynthesized via the acetate malonate pathway [ 62 ] comprise a whole spectrum of molecules produced by brown seaweed [ 63 ] with anti-allergic [ 64 ], antioxidant [ 65 ], and photoprotective [ 66 ] properties; with noticeable bioactivity in virus-related studies that include the Influenza virus [ 67 , 68 ], HIV [ 69 ], and Hepatitis Virus [ 70 ]. Morán et al [ 71 ] tested the in vitro antiviral activity of polyphenols from five Mexican seaweeds [ 62 ] against the Measles Virus (MeV). They assessed the combined antiviral effect of polyphenols and sulfated polysaccharides isolated from the seaweeds with a synthetic nucleoside to discover new antiviral drug candidates that could help controlling viral diseases [ 71 ].…”