Colds are caused by a virus family with hundreds of variants, making it impossible to vaccinate against or become immune to all of them; add to that viruses evolve and mutate rapidly to gain resistance to drugs. Most cold remedies because of those reasons rely on treating the symptoms of infections rather than taking on the virus itself.
A newly developed molecule targets N-myristoyltransferase protein in human cells, which are hijacked by viruses to construct the protein shell that protects the virus genome. Molecules target a human protein not the virus it makes emergence of resistance highly unlikely. All strains of the virus need this human protein to make copies of themselves, the molecule will work against them, as well as polio and foot and mouth disease viruses.
Previous attempts to create such drug have had unwanted side effects of being toxic. The new molecule, codenamed IMP-1088 is more than 100 times more potent than previous molecules targeting the human protein, has shown to completely block several strains of virus without affecting human cells. It was noted that further studies are required to determine if the molecule would be toxic in the body.
