On Sep 2, 2015, researchers at Dr. Wei Xu’s group published an article entitled “Zinc Finger Antiviral Protein inhibits Coxsackievirus B3 virus replication and protects against viral myocarditis” in Antiviral Research.
The host Zinc finger antiviral protein (ZAP) exhibits antiviral activity against positive-stranded RNA viruses (Togaviridae), negative-stranded RNA viruses (Filoviridae) and retroviruses (Retroviridae). Its rolein enterovirus infection and enterovirus-related disease remains unknown. This study demonstrated that coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) infection induces ZAP expression in heart of susceptible mice; ZAP potently inhibits CVB3 replication via directly targeting 3’ and 5’UTR of viral RNA and significantly increases the resistance of mice to acute viral myocarditis by reducing cardiac inflammatory cytokine production. This is the first report of the antiviral properties of ZAP against enterovirus, further expanding ZAP’s range of viral targets and suggesting ZAP as molecular target for treating viral myocarditis.
Dr. Min Li and Ms. Kepeng Yan are the co-first authors; Prof. Wei Xu is the corresponding author. Prof.Chunfu Zheng provides great help. This work was funded by China NSFC grant (31470869, 31072973, 31400769), Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (2013CB530501), the Natural Science foundation of Jiangsu Province (14KJA310005, BK20140371), theJiangsu Provincial Innovative Research Team, Project funded by priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (grant PCSIRTIRT1075).