Virology

Biography

Biography: Zenab Aly Torky

Abstract

High prevalence of viral infections and constant emergence of resistant virus strains worldwide calls for an urgent need to discover/develop novel therapeutic agents to improve the global treatment of virus infection especially against Herpes Simplex Virus-type 1 (HSV-1). The objective of this study is to conduct phytochemical screenings to have an insight on the identification, the essential components of the methanolic/aqueous Hibiscus extracts, cell viability and cell proliferation assay as well as the antiviral activity of the methanolic/aqueous of Hibiscus were evaluated by reduction of the viral cytopathic effect, which showed a potential activity of both extracts against HSV-1 as indicated by selectivity index (SI) values of 8.0 and 7.7 for methanolic and aqueous Hibiscus extracts correspondingly. Different experiments like viral binding, viral adsorption, virucidal, and time of addition assays were designed to investigate the mechanism of antiviral activity of Hibiscus extract revealing that the extract not only prevented the virus particles from interacting with the Vero cells in the pre-treatment assay but also had a prophylactic effect blocking the replication of the virus causing prophylactic selectivity indices of 6.1 and 5.2 for methanolic and aqueous Hibiscus extracts correspondingly, confirming a maximum protection of Vero cells against HSV-1 attack. Results shown in this study demonstrate the potent and broad spectrum antiviral activity due to the multiple components contained in the Hibiscus extract from active ingredients. Fluorescence microscopy were used to demonstrate the viral kinetics which revealed that the antiviral activity of all Hibiscus extracts tested was effective during the first stages of the virus replication cycle and thus, Hibiscus extract may provide a novel treatment for HSV-1 infectivity