Abstract
Sulphated polysaccharides (SP) extracted from seaweeds have antiviral properties and are much less cytotoxic than conventional drugs, but little is known about their mode of action. Combination antiviral chemotherapy may offer advantages over single agent therapy, increasing efficiency, potency and delaying the emergence of resistant virus. The paramyxoviridae family includes pathogens causing morbidity and mortality worldwide in humans and animals, such as the Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) in poultry. This study aims at determining the antiviral activity and mechanism of action in vitro of an ulvan (SP from the green seaweed Ulva clathrata), and of its mixture with a fucoidan (SP from Cladosiphon okamuranus), against La Sota NDV strain. The ulvan antiviral activity was tested using syncytia formation, exhibiting an IC50 of 0.1 μg/mL; ulvan had a better anti cell-cell spread effect than that previously shown for fucoidan, and inhibited cell-cell fusion via a direct effect on the F0 protein, but did not show any virucidal effect. The mixture of ulvan and fucoidan showed a greater anti-spread effect than SPs alone, but ulvan antagonizes the effect of fucoidan on the viral attachment/entry. Both SPs may be promising antivirals against paramyxovirus infection but their mixture has no clear synergistic advantage.
Highlights
Since the first report of the antiviral activity of sulphated polysaccharides in 1958 [1], a large number of Sulphated polysaccharides (SP) have been found to possess a broad spectrum of antiviral activity
Ulva clathrata chemical composition found in present study is on the line with that reported by Peña-Rodriguez et al [15] for the same
Characterization by chemical analysis indicates that the structure of the obtained sulphated polysaccharide is similar to that of ulvan-rich extracts already reported in the literature
Summary
Since the first report of the antiviral activity of sulphated polysaccharides in 1958 [1], a large number of SP have been found to possess a broad spectrum of antiviral activity. Among the polymers synthetized by these Ulva sp., cell wall polysaccharides represents 38%–54% of all dry algal matter [7], and can be classified in four polysaccharide families: two major ones, ulvan and cellulose and two minor ones, xyloglucan and glucurunan. The main constituents reported in ulvans from several Ulvales species [15,16,17,18,19] are: Rhamnose (16.8%–45.0% dw), xylose (2.1%–12.0%), glucose (0.5%–6.4%), uronic acid (6.5%–19.0%), sulphate (16.0%–23.2%) and iduronic acid (1.1%–9.1%), rhamnose occurring mainly in the form of the aldobiouronic acid, 4-O-β-D-glucuronosyl-L-rhamnose
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