Scientists in Hong Kong said on Tuesday they had devised a new way to identify chemicals that can counter new and dangerous viruses, such as SARS, and these chemicals may be developed into drugs. However, a cure for diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed more than 800 people worldwide last year, may still be a distant prospect as researchers have yet to proceed to animal and human testing, the scientists said. The breakthrough is based on “chemical genetics,” or the use of chemicals to thwart viruses from replicating. Using the method, developed jointly by the University of Hong Kong and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, new emerging viruses are screened against a chemical library of more than 50,000 molecule compounds. The scientists recently tried out the new approach, called the high-throughput screening platform, on the SARS virus and found that 104 of the chemicals could arrest the bug.
