Japan Team Finds How Novel Coronavirus Enters Blood Vessels

Kyoto, Sept. 22 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese team has elucidated the mechanism by which the novel coronavirus enters human blood vessels, according to its study published on the U.S. journal Science Advances on Thursday.

After entering the human body, the virus suppresses the expression of a protein that bonds vascular endothelial cells, breaks the bond between cells and enters a blood vessel through the created spaces, the team said.

The team included Kazuo Takayama, instructor at Kyoto University's Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, or CiRA, and Yoshiaki Okada, associate professor at Osaka University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Its experiments involved an "airway-on-a-chip" technology to simulate the response of an airway using a model created on a chip from cultured airway cells.

The airway models on chips infected with the novel coronavirus showed a decline in the protein for bonding vascular endothelial cells. The team confirmed that the virus broke cell junctions and entered blood vessels.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]