Japanese team discovers how new coronavirus enters blood vessels

Kyoto, Sept. 22 (Jiji Press)–A Japanese team has elucidated the mechanism by which the new coronavirus enters human blood vessels, according to their study published Thursday in the American journal Science Advances.

After entering the human body, the virus suppresses expression of a protein that binds vascular endothelial cells, breaks the bond between cells, and enters a blood vessel through the spaces created, the team said.

The team included Kazuo Takayama, an instructor at Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, or CiRA, and Yoshiaki Okada, an associate professor at the University of Kyoto’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Osaka.

His experiments involved airway-on-a-chip technology to simulate the response of an airway using a model created on a chip from cultured airway cells.

Airway models on microchips infected with the novel coronavirus showed a decrease in vascular endothelial cell binding protein. The team confirmed that the virus broke cell junctions and entered blood vessels.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]