Double duty in dengue

Inhibitors of BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase (BCR-ABL), better known for treating chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), might provide new opportunities for preventing and treating dengue fever. A group from Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has identified an allosteric inhibitor of BCR-ABL that both prevents replication of the dengue virus and blocks its entry, providing a two-pronged attack that could both reduce transmission and suppress dengue infection.

In a previous study, the team, led by Priscilla Yang, fished out the BCR-ABL inhibitors Gleevec imatinib and Sprycel dasatinib in a phenotypic screen of a kinase inhibitor library, and showed the compounds had antiviral activity against dengue. Yang is an associate professor of microbiology and immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. ...