TY - JOUR T1 - HTCC as a highly effective polymeric inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.03.29.014183 SP - 2020.03.29.014183 AU - Aleksandra Milewska AU - Ying Chi AU - Artur Szczepanski AU - Emilia Barreto-Duran AU - Kevin Liu AU - Dan Liu AU - Xiling Guo AU - Yiyue Ge AU - Jingxin Li AU - Lunbiao Cui AU - Marek Ochman AU - Maciej Urlik AU - Sylwia Rodziewicz-Motowidlo AU - Fengcai Zhu AU - Krzysztof Szczubialka AU - Maria Nowakowska AU - Krzysztof Pyrc Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/31/2020.03.29.014183.abstract N2 - The beginning of 2020 brought us information about the novel coronavirus emerging in China. Rapid research resulted in the characterization of the pathogen, which appeared to be a member of the SARS-like cluster, commonly seen in bats. Despite the global and local efforts, the virus escaped the healthcare measures and rapidly spread in China and later globally, officially causing a pandemic and global crisis in March 2020. At present, different scenarios are being written to contain the virus, but the development of novel anticoronavirals for all highly pathogenic coronaviruses remains the major challenge. Here, we describe the antiviral activity of previously developed by us HTCC compound (N-(2-hydroxypropyl)-3-trimethylammonium chitosan chloride), which may be used as potential inhibitor of currently circulating highly pathogenic coronaviruses – SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV. ER -