Cytodyn Inc (CYDY)

[MrGuru]

Vision and Value:

As we all know this is a very recent development and, therefore, there is not much information to go about.

I came across a very interesting paper published by Delhi's Kusuma School of biological sciences, IIT. They used computational tools to analyze the sequence and structural features of 2019-nCoV

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf

Their conclusions are very interesting, below a summary that concerns us (emphasis are mine):

1) The amino acid sequence presents 4 insertions (an insertion is a modification in the “normal” amino genomic sequence) of that are not present in other coronaviruses analyzed

2) Surprisingly, each of the four inserts aligned with short segments of the Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins

3) The first 3 inserts aligned to short segments of amino acid residues in HIV-1 gp120 (glycoprotein GP120 is a glycoprotein exposed on the surface of the HIV envelope), the insert 4 aligned to HIV-1 Gag (with gaps). Gag , or group specific antigen, is the major structural protein of HIV-1 and all other retroviruses and comprises about 50% of the mass of a viral particle.

4) It is unlikely that all 4 inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein fortuitously match with 2 key structural proteins of an unrelated virus (HIV-1).

5) The novel inserts are part of the receptor binding site of 2019-nCoV

And they mention that:

Gag protein of HIV is involved in host membrane binding, packaging of the virus and for the formation of virus-like particles. Gp120 plays crucial role in recognizing the host cell by binding to the primary receptor CD4 (CD4 receptor binding is the most obvious step in HIV infection). This binding induces structural rearrangements in GP120, creating a high affinity binding site for a chemokine co-receptor like CXCR4 and/or CCR5.

So, it could be argued that a CCR5 antagonist, could very well play a role in controlling the virus due to its capacity to bind to gp120.

Of course, all of the above out of one paper only. The Chinese know better by now with their practical experience and it will be very interesting to hear what Dr. Patterson has to say tomorrow.

I greatly enjoyed, and learnt, from your article about GILD (and CYDY) in SA. Congratulations !!!, very well written and researched

I hope it can bring them to their senses before few Billion dollars if their revenue disappear ...