Supporting data for "Antiviral effect of the branched peptide 4P9R on human rhinovirus"

Human rhinovirus (HRV) is one of the most common viral pathogens that cause human respiratory tract infection, but there are no approved antiviral drugs for clinical use against HRV. In the recent COVID‐19 pandemic, the persistence of HRV and the complex effects of its co-infection have once again emphasised the importance of developing a broad-spectrum antiviral drug with anti-HRV effects. 4P9R is a branched broad-spectrum antiviral peptide developed by our group based on natural antiviral peptides, which has shown good antiviral potential against several influenza viruses and coronaviruses by crosslinking them and blocking their entry and release. However, the antiviral potential of 4P9R for non-enveloped viruses has not yet been tested.

In this study, we demonstrated the dose-dependent antiviral effect of 4P9R against several HRV serotypes, including major group and minor group HRVs. We found that 4P9R could directly act on HRVs and crosslink the viruses on the cell surface, thus blocking their entry. We also demonstrated that 4P9R could increase viral attachment on cell surface and slightly reduce viral release. We tried to establish a mouse model for HRV replication to verify the antiviral effects of 4P9R. However, current HRV animal models could not support HRV replication with sufficient viral load changes in mice, indicating that the animal model requires further optimization. Overall, we demonstrated that this novel antiviral peptide has broad-spectrum activities against various serotypes of HRV.