TY - JOUR T1 - Iota-carrageenan and Xylitol inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.08.19.225854 SP - 2020.08.19.225854 AU - Shruti Bansal AU - Colleen B. Jonsson AU - Shannon L. Taylor AU - Juan Manuel Figueroa AU - Andrea Vanesa Dugour AU - Carlos Palacios AU - Julio César Vega Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/21/2020.08.19.225854.abstract N2 - COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) is a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2) infection affecting millions of persons around the world. There is an urgent unmet need to provide an easy-to-produce, affordable medicine to prevent transmission and provide early treatment for this disease. The nasal cavity and the rhinopharynx are the sites of initial replication of SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, a nasal spray may be a suitable dosage form for this purpose. The main objective of our study was to test the antiviral action of three candidate nasal spray formulations against SARS-CoV-2. We have found that iota-carrageenan in concentrations as low as 6 µg/ mL inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection in Vero cell cultures. The concentrations found to be active in vitro against SARS-CoV-2 may be easily achieved by the application of nasal sprays already marketed in several countries. Xylitol at a concentration of 5 % m/V has proved to be viricidal on its own and the association with iota-carrageenan may be beneficial, as well.Competing Interest StatementThe study has been funded by Amcyte Pharma Inc. (US) Juan Manuel Figueroa, Andrea Dugour and Carlos Palacios receive funding from Fundacion Pablo Cassara (Argentina) Julio Cesar Vega receives salary from Laboratorio Pablo Cassara and is inventor of a US patent application related to this manuscript. ER -