INVESTIGATING THE ANTI-VIRAL POTENTIAL OF CRYPTOLEPINE

In April 2024, Dr Mutocheluh won the prestigious Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award and subsequently relocated to Dr Robert Schwartz's laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine. In Robert's laboratory Dr Mutocheluh will culture HIV, HBV, HCV, Dengue & Zika viruses in the presence or absence of the test drug CS. Dr Mutocheluh expects that CS will inhibit the replication of these viruses. Further, Dr Mutocheluh will then go ahead to investigate the molecular mechanistic activity of CS ability to inhibit HIV replication. One school of thought is that CS augment the type I interferon antiviral innate defence pathway to inhibit HIV replication – Dr Mutocheluh's group previously reported that CS up-regulated the type I interferon response signalling pathway via the JAK-STAT-ISRE arm of the pathway. Another school of thought is that CS molecules intercalate HIV proviral DNA during HIV replication to terminate the process. Results from the current study are expected to lead to a novel anti-HIV drug of African herbal origin.

Dr Mohamed Mutocheluh's research group focuses on translational research related to microbial pathogens and immunity to microbial diseases, with a particular interest in human oncogenic viruses, mycotoxins and recently anti-HIV drug discovery. In collaboration with his colleagues at the University of Ghana and the University of Surrey in London, they showed for the first time that the antimalaria herbal drug cryptolepis sanguinolenta (CS) has both antiviral and immunomodulatory activities. In 2021, they reported that CS inhibited hepatitis B virus replication both in vitro and in vivo. In October 2023, Dr Mutocheluh reported at the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) scientific meeting in Chicago that CS reduced HIV load by 40% within 10 weeks in a clinical case study. Recent unpublished results from his laboratory suggest the modified version of CS (LT500MM) improved the well-being and reduced drug-resistant HIV load >90% of 4 patients in a series of clinical case studies in Ghana.