Screening of FDA-approved drugs using a recombinant Cedar virus to improve treatment options for Nipah virus infection

  • J Gen Virol. 2026 Feb;107(2). doi: 10.1099/jgv.0.002195.
Emily Clayton  1  2 ,  Moushimi Amaya  3 ,  Dung Nguyen  1  2 ,  Stephen M Laidlaw  1  2 ,  Christopher C Broder  3 ,  Miles Carroll  1  2
Affiliations
  • 1. Centre for Human Genetics, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
  • 2. Pandemic Sciences Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
  • 3. Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, USA.
PMID: 41649863 DOI: 10.1099/jgv.0.002195
Abstract

Nipah virus and Hendra virus are highly pathogenic henipaviruses for which there are no approved therapeutics for use in humans. Using recombinant Cedar virus expressing luciferase (rCedV-Luc) as a CL2 surrogate, we screened a library of 2,703 Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved compounds, yielding 5 promising candidates: bortezomib, harringtonine, homoharringtonine, ixazomib citrate and lanatoside C. Compounds demonstrated low half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of ≤0.45 µM and high selectivity indexes >6 in mammalian cell lines. Time-of-addition studies suggest that these compounds target a post-entry stage of henipavirus replication. This study demonstrates the utility of rCedV-Luc as a surrogate for the Antiviral screening of henipaviruses and identification of promising candidates for further investigation and development as henipavirus antivirals.

Keywords
Cedar virus; Nipah virus; drug screening.
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