Hypertonic saline and aprotinin based blockage of SARS-CoV-2 specific furin site cleavage by inhibition of nasal protease activity

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 enters into the human body mainly through the nasal epithelial cells. Cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 needs to be pre-activated by S1/S2 boundary furin motif cleavage by furin and/or relevant proteases. It is important to locally block SARS-CoV-2 S1/S2 site cleavage caused by furin and other relevant protease activity in the nasal cavity. We tested hypertonic saline and aprotinin-based blockage of SARS-CoV-2 specific furin site cleavage by furin, trypsin and nasal swab samples containing nasal proteases. Our results show that saline and aprotinin block SARS-Cov-2 specific furin site cleavage and that a saline and aprotinin combination could significantly reduce SARS-Cov-2 wild-type and P681R mutant furin site cleavage by inhibition of nasal protease activity.