A group from Arterra Bioscience SPA, Naples, Italy, etc. has reported that pomegranate peel extract (PPE) would be a promising source of novel anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2021.638187/full
Two major extracts from pomegranate peel are Punicalagin and Ellagitannins.
SARS-CoV-2 Spike/ACE2 binding was inhibited significantly in the presence of PPE as shown below. AC384 was used as a control, a monoclonal antibody that inhibited the binding between Spike and ACE2 by specifically recognizing ACE2 itself.
Infection experiments were done with using human kidney-2 cells (HK-2). The infection rate of lentivirus carrying SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein into was greatly reduced in the presence of PPE, and a lentivirus carrying vesicular stomatitis virus G (VSVG) protein was used as a control.
These in vitro experiments are quite reassuring to go to the next stage of the development of effective and innovative therapies using PPE.
