A Polish chemist from the Wrocław University of Technology, Prof. Maciej Drąg and his team of researchers, together with their counterparts at Lubeck University in Germany have made a breakthrough discovery in coronavirus treatment.

The scientists found an enzyme inhibitor which destroys the virus' proteins and hence destroys it. The study conducted by the team from Wroclaw could constitute a basis for the COVID-19 cure. The enzyme is unique and not found in people, meaning that the potential cure would not negatively affect the patient.



"If we treat this enzyme as a lock, then we have acquired a key to it", said the scientist. He added that the enzyme was known, but there were millions of combinations of "keys".



"And we found one key that matches this enzyme," says the scientist.



The results from Prof. Drąg and his team’s research is still under review, but his team have already made their results available to scientists from around the world for free. "We have not patented this. The publication preprint is available online: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.07.981928v1.full