Use their own weapon against them 🧬

Despite the misleading name, monkeypox is a risk for all animals – and humans too. With that in mind, a new study is going to be the first step towards understanding monkeypox's ability to replicate in the respiratory cells of cattle and pigs. In order to answer the many questions around the topic, that new study aims to identify areas tagged as priorities by the White House: 

• The potential for reverse zoonoses (when viruses circulating in humans spill over to animals);
• The virus' pathogenesis (disease development) in both animal and human cells in vitro (test tubes);
• Potential targets for therapeutics.      
• On an important note, researchers assure no tests will be conducted on live animals – computer simulations will be employed instead.

Even though monkeypox has been circulating in Africa for many years now and has infected individuals who usually heal without medical treatment, the recent worldwide outbreak has raised concerns and understanding how the virus works is critical to the development of new vaccines.   

• Monkeypox may not be as contagious as COVID, but it’s transmitted between animals via close contact with skin lesions or bodily fluids; and among humans, it’s possible that the virus may also be transmitted via respiratory droplets. Nevertheless, not much is understood about what happens once the virus enters the body.  

What researchers are set to explore is a novel, post-infection therapeutic — a synthetic defective interfering (DI) particle-based therapy: a harmless version of a real virus that acts like a parasite of the real virus and eventually, causes the extinction of both the disease-causing virus and themselves. Yeah, we’d be using the enemy’s own weapon against them.

• Additionally, antivirals developed for use in patients with smallpox may prove beneficial.