Original story from Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia). Seaweed may be a popular food item, but it has certain properties that mean it could act as a shield within the human body, effectively blocking norovirus infection. To date, there are no approved vaccines or anti-viral treatments for human norovirus, the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis outbreaks worldwide with more than 685 million infections each year. New collaborative research between Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia) and Australian biotechnology company Marinova (Hobart, Australia) has investigated whether compounds from a range of brown and green seaweeds could block the illness in the early stages of infection. Senior author Grant Hansman from Griffith’s Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics said noroviruses infect people by attaching to molecules in the intestine called histo-blood group antigens (HBGAs). “We tested the seaweed compounds fucoidan and ulvan to see how well they prevented norovirus virus-like particles from binding to human saliva samples that contain HBGAs,” Hansman explained. “Fucoidan, from brown seaweed, showed the strongest and most consistent blocking activity against two major norovirus strains, GII.4 and GII.17.” The fucoidan likely bound to the HBGA binding pocket to form a physical shield making it harder for the virus to attach. Step forward in quest for norovirus vaccine A simple and efficient system for understanding the functions of specific norovirus genes provides new avenues for developing antivirals and vaccines. Co-senior author Thomas Haselhorst added that fucoidan had a history of dietary use, had demonstrated good tolerability in human studies and was used in…
