Crank up the body's own alarm, and cells shrug off RSV

Most antiviral drugs chase the virus; Santanu Bose's team at Washington State University went looking for the cell's own defences instead. They found that a protein called ISG15, released outside cells during infection, acts as a booster for a previously unknown antiviral pathway — and that when they deliberately cranked that pathway up, cells became markedly more resistant to RSV, the common respiratory virus that hits babies and older adults hardest. Because the approach strengthens the host rather than targeting the virus, it could keep working even as viruses mutate. The study, led by graduate students Lindsay Grace Miller and Sudiksha Pandit, appears in Cell Communication and Signaling.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation