Recombinant Bacterial ACE2 receptors -like enzyme of B38-CAP could be promising COVID-19 infection- and lung injury preventing drug better than recombinant human ACE2 Mahmoud ELkazzaz1 1Department of chemistry and biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Damietta University, GOEIC, Egypt. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ B38-CAP is a bacteria-derived ACE2-like enzyme that suppresses hypertension and cardiac dysfunction Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is critically involved in cardiovascular physiology and pathology, and is currently clinically evaluated to treat acute lung failure. Here we show that the B38-CAP, a carboxypeptidase derived from Paenibacillus sp. B38, is an ACE2-like enzyme to decrease angiotensin II levels in mice. In protein 3D structure analysis, B38-CAP homolog shares structural similarity to mammalian ACE2 with low sequence identity. In vitro, recombinant B38-CAP protein catalyzed the conversion of angiotensin II to angiotensin 1-7, as well as other known ACE2 target peptides. Treatment with B38-CAP suppressed angiotensin II-induced hypertension, cardiac hypertrophy, and fibrosis in mice. Moreover, B38-CAP inhibited pressure overload-induced pathological hypertrophy, myocardial fibrosis, and cardiac dysfunction in mice. A study demonestrated that the bacterial B38-CAP as an ACE2-like carboxypeptidase, indicating that evolution has shaped a bacterial carboxypeptidase to a human ACE2-like enzyme. Bacterial engineering could be utilized to design improved protein drugs for hypertension and heart failure. On the other hand, Treatment with recombinant human ACE2 protein (rhACE2), which is devoid of its membrane-anchored domain thus soluble, has been demonstrated to exhibit beneficial effects in various animal models including heart failure, acute lung injury, and diabetic nephropathy, and so forth. rhACE2 is currently tested in the clinic to treat ARDS and COVID-19 infected patients . Using cell cultures and organoids, researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, showed that by adding a genetically modified variant of ACE2, called human recombinant soluble angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hrsACE2), COVID-19 was prevented from entering cells.The paper, published in Cell, shows that hrsACE2 had a dose dependent effect of viral growth of SARS-CoV-2 and was able to reduce it by a factor of 1,000 to 5,000 in cell cultures. Despite its beneficial effects, rhACE2 is a glycosylated protein and thus its preparation requires time- and cost-consuming protein expression system with mammalian or insect cells, which may not be advantageous in drug development and medical economy Although it had been reported that an immune response is associated with the chronic infusion of rhACE2 resulting in the degradation of rhACE226, this was not observed for B38-CAP; there were no antibodies against B38-CAP detectable in the serum of mice infused with B38-CAP for 2 weeks.B38-CAP is easily prepared with E. coli expression system and is cost effective. with therapeutic efficacy and less toxicity in mouse heart failure model. Implantation of B38-CAP-filled osmotic mini-pumps significantly suppressed Ang II-induced hypertension in conscious mice .without affecting the heart rate. These results indicate that B38-CAP antagonizes the vasopressor effect of Ang II. So the principle investigator expects and suggests that treating with cloned Bacterial ACE2 receptors -like enzyme of B38-CAP could be promising COVID-19 infection- and lung injury preventing drug better than recombinant human ACE2 in addition to brsACE2, expected to lure the virus to attach itself to the copy instead of the actual cells… It distracts the virus from infecting the cells to the same degree and should lead to a reduction in the growth of the virus in the lungs and other organs. A study showed that recombinant B38-CAP protein downregulates Ang II levels in mice and antagonizes Ang II-induced hypertension, pathological cardiac hypertrophy, and myocardial fibrosis. We also show beneficial effects of B38-CAP on the pathology of pressure overload-induced heart failure in mice without overt toxicities.Finally the principal investigator expect that treatment with ACE2-like enzyme in bacteria B38-CAP may be do the same mechanism of rhACE2 in inhibiting COVID -19 and the other suggested mechanism is that injection of ACE2-like enzyme of bacteria B38-CAP in human body may down regulate human ACE2 which is the real receptor of COVID -19 and in the same time it will be resistant to COVID- spike protein because there seems a difference in substrate specificity between two enzymes. Keywords: COVID 2019 ,Infection, B38-CAP , Bacterial ACE2 receptors -like enzyme , rhACE226.

NCT04375046

Conditions

1. COVID-19

Interventions

1. Drug: Recombinant Bacterial ACE2 receptors -like enzyme of B38-CAP (rbACE2)

MeSH:Infection Lung Injury