Now more than ever, we experience the impact of RNA viruses on our everyday lives and their threat to public health and global economy.
As RNA viruses are prone to easily undergo mutations and selective adjustments, it is assumed that global pandemics (such as the Sars-CoV-2 related pandemic) will occur more frequently in the future, especially with a growing world population.
With this in mind, we would like to highlight this recent publication by Imamura et al. (2021). In its experimental setup, StemFit was applied to cultivate human iPS cells. These were infected with modified Sendai RNA virus (SeV), exhibiting eGFP expression. This screening system was used to find possible drug candidates and therapeutics against RNA-virus activity by measuring eGFP fluorescence reduction by the drug (see image below, taken from paper).
Several drug candidates were identified with this screening procedure, also showing promising antiviral effects against Ebola and Sars-CoV-2 RNA-viruses. Please find the full publication under the following link:
https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2211-5463.13153
The use of StemFit as a cultivation medium generates reliable and well-defined growth conditions for human stem cells and iPS cells. It allows for feeder-free cultivation, reducing growth variations and contamination concerns. StemFit enables the execution of highly important drug-screening research, as displayed in the publication by Imamura et al.