Grant: Operating Grant

Lung infection by influenza virus is responsible for annual seasonal infection that affects several million people in the world, especially among the elderly and children. To date, vaccines and drugs are still insufficient to control respiratory infection caused by influenza virus. New approaches are thus urgently needed to treat and even to prevent such infections. In this regard, the recent discovery of natural detectors which recognize viral components and expressed in several cell types, including lung epithelial cells and lung infiltrating cells, may provide alternative strategy to develop new therapeutic approaches. We thus propose to evaluate the mechanism of action of muramyl dipeptide which was found to control influenza virus infection by activating the innate viral detector named NOD2. NOD2 is expressed by cells of lungs and by circulating blood cells which are also involved in viral clearance. Administration of such molecules alone or in combination with antiviral agents may be beneficial to rapidly suppress influenza virus infection and to restore normal lung functions.