{"id":102235,"date":"2020-02-12T10:03:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T18:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/mass-general-hospital-researchers-identify-new"},"modified":"2020-02-13T00:35:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T08:35:02","slug":"mass-general-hospital-researchers-identify-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/mass-general-hospital-researchers-identify-new","title":{"rendered":"Mass General Hospital researchers identify new \u201cuniversal\u201d target for antiviral treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mass-general-hospital-researchers-identify-new2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Apparently scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital are making some progress on identifying what they are calling a \u201cuniversal vaccine\u201d or the \u201cAchilles heel\u201d for viruses\u2026<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>BOSTON \u2014 As the coronavirus outbreak shows, viruses are a constant threat to humanity. Vaccines are regularly developed and deployed against specific viruses, but that process takes a lot of time, doesn\u2019t help everyone who needs protection, and still leaves people exposed to new outbreaks and new viruses.<\/p>\n<p>Now, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have uncovered a novel potential antiviral drug target that could lead to treatments protecting against a host of infectious diseases \u2014 creating a pan, or universal, treatment. Their work suggests that the protein Argonaute 4 (AGO4) is an \u201cAchilles heel\u201d for viruses.<\/p>\n<p>AGO4 is one of a family of AGO proteins. Until now, there has been little evidence of whether they have individual roles. The researchers, led by Kate L. Jeffrey, PhD, and her collaborators found that AGO4 plays a key role protecting cells against viral infections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital are making some progress on identifying what they are calling a \u201cuniversal vaccine\u201d or the \u201cAchilles heel\u201d for viruses\u2026 BOSTON \u2014 As the coronavirus outbreak shows, viruses are a constant threat to humanity. Vaccines are regularly developed and deployed against specific viruses, but that process takes a lot of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102274,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102235\/revisions\/102274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}