Gary Wong, Shihua He, Vinayakumar Siragam, Yuhai Bi, Majambu Mbikay, Michel Chretien, Xiangguo Qiu
Q3G is a natural derivative of quercetin and is already widely used in various foods and drinks. Our results clearly demonstrated that Q3G exerts antiviral activity against ZIKV in both tissue culture and knockout mice, and that post-exposure in vivo treatment with Q3G could have a beneficial effect. In the future, Q3G should be tested in human cell lines (such as Huh-7, HeLa, or K048, a fetal brain neural stem cell line) to provide further data supporting its potential efficacy in humans; in addition, live viral loads or viremia should be tested in treated animals to supplement the survival results observed in this study. Although the treatment regimens will need to be further optimized (i.e., dosage, frequency of treatment, and administration routes), our results support the results of Q3G efficacy studies in nonhuman primates against ZIKV infection. Further studies will also be needed to investigate the mechanism of Q3G antiviral action, in order to obtain valuable insights into the design of novel targets for antiviral therapeutics in the future.
