Common vegetable oil compound shows power to fight dangerous viruses

A common vegetable oil may hold the key to fighting some of the world's most dangerous viruses. 

FIU received a U.S. patent for a linseed oil polyol-derived compound shown to inhibit viral infections including HIV and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), as well as bacterial infections causing strep and staph.

Linseed oil, derived from flax seeds, exists in both edible and industrial forms. The edible version (commonly known as flaxseed oil) is widely available in grocery stores, health food shops, and pharmacies. In the hands of FIU researchers, polyols (chemically modified compounds) derived from food-grade linseed oil show promise as a starting point for preventing and treating challenging infections.

The invention, "Treatment and Prevention of Infections Using Vegetable Oil-Derived Polyols" (U.S. Patent No. 12,440,467), builds on earlier work in developing a unique nanogel that led to a patent in 2022. 

Now the FIU team has taken the science a significant step further.

The linseed oil polyol had never been explored on its own for antiviral properties. Our research revealed that the polyol compound shows strong potential to inhibit a broad spectrum of viral and bacterial infections."

What makes this compound particularly attractive, Vashist said, is not just what it does, but what it's made of. Linseed oil is a renewable, widely available, plant-based resource. The polyol derived from it is biodegradable, low-cost and can be produced on an industrial scale, making it accessible far beyond the research laboratory.

Using computational modeling to determine exactly where the compound attaches to viruses, Vashist and her team discovered that it binds to the same regions on HIV and COVID-19 viruses that other antiviral medicines target. This blocks viruses from entering and infecting human cells.

"This is a major breakthrough. You can add this compound to existing treatments to give them broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties, and it's non-toxic to healthy cells," said Vashist, who has spent more than a decade using linseed oil-based polyol to create different nanomaterials and improve how they work. "It may be formulated into pills, tablets, lozenges, aerosols and sterile solutions."

Additional benefits include enhancing the ability of nanocarriers to cross the blood-brain barrier, making it possible to treat many more neurological disorders, infections and tumors previously unreachable with conventional medications. The compound also has fluorescent properties that enable researchers to track it during imaging studies to confirm that drugs are reaching their target.

Vashist is the principal investigator on several research projects and holds multiple patents, including one covering polyols and polyol-based hydrogels for cancer treatment. Contributors to the patent include FIU Medicine researchers Hitendra Chand, Madhavan Nair and Andrea Raymond, along with Prem Chapagain from FIU's College of Arts, Sciences & Education.

Funding for the work has been provided in part by the National Institutes of Health. Vashist recently received an NIH R03 grant from the National Institute on Aging to explore linseed polyol-based nanogels as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

The timing of the patent is notable. In a world still grappling with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistent challenge of drug-resistant infections, a low-cost, plant-derived compound capable of targeting multiple viruses could represent an important new tool in the global health arsenal, Vashist said.

For her, the goal has always been to move from the laboratory to the marketplace by synthesizing and bottling the compound to sell to pharmaceutical companies.

"This is green technology, easy to synthesize, affordable, stable and versatile," she said. "It's a discovery that is a huge step forward for health care."

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