Combination of Recombinant Bacterial ACE2 Receptors -Like Enzyme of B38-CAP and Isotretinoin Could be Promising Treatment for COVID-19 Infection- and Its Inflammatory Complications

Combination of Recombinant Bacterial ACE2 receptors -like enzyme of B38-CAP and Isotretinoin could be promising treatment for COVID-19 infection- and Its inflammatory complications

Mahmoud ELkazzaz1

1Department of chemistry and biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Damietta University, 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. A study demonstrated 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. pretreatment of B38-CAP markedly down regulated a massive increase of plasma Ang II levels at 5 min after Ang II injection In addition to the currently used drugs to inhibit Ang II generation or signaling, such as ACE inhibitors or Angiotensin receptor blockers, direct down-modulation of Ang II levels by rhACE2 protein is one of the promising candidates for new therapeutic strategy in cardiovascular disease and other Ang II-related diseases, e.g. ARDS. On the other hand, although mass production of rhACE2 as a protein drug costs due to requirement of mammalian cell expression systems, B38-CAP is easily prepared with E. coli expression system and is cost effective. Therapeutic efficacy and less toxicity in mouse heart failure models would warrant further investigation of B38-CAP or other microbial carboxypeptidases in disease models. Finally the principal investigator expects that treatment with ACE2-like enzyme of bacteria B38-CAP expected to work efficiently Like human ACE2 and it will save the lung cells from COVID - 19 inhibitory effect and down regulation of ACE2 because COVID-19 binds to human ACE2 and down regulates it and this receptors is very important for lung cells survival and function So ,the principal investigator also expects that B38-CAP ACE2 like enzyme may be not recognized by COVID -19 spike protein because evolutionary it is too far away from human ace2 and human ACE2 is a real receptor of COVID -19 not ACE2 like enzyme but in the same time it will make the same function of human ACE2 In another study by Sinha et al who analyzed a publicly available Connectivity Map (CMAP) dataset of pre/post transcriptomic profiles for drug treatment in cell lines for over 20,000 small molecules, isotretinoin was the strongest down-regulator of ACE 2 receptors. On the other hand, they found 6 drugs in CMAP that are currently being investigated in clinical trials for treating COVID-19 (chloroquine, thalidomide, methylprednisolone, losartan, lopinavir and ritonavir, from clinicaltrials.gov), none of which was found to significantly alter ACE2 expression (P>0.1) Moreover, another study demonstrated that isotretinoin is a Potential papain like protease (PLpro) inhibitors which is a protein encoded by SARS-CoV-2 genes and considered one of the proteins that should be targeted in COVID-19 treatment by performing target-based virtual ligand screening . So, the principal investigator expects strong inhibition of COVID - 19 infection And rescuing the lung cells from its serious attack by treating with ACE2 like enzyme and Isotretinoin

Keywords: COVID 2019 , Isotretinoin,B38-CAP , Bacterial ACE2 receptors -like enzyme , rhACE226.