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Abstract
Most recently, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 has triggered a global pandemic without successful therapeutics. The goal of the present study was to define the antiviral effect and therapeutic action of blue light irradiation in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells. Vero cells were infected with SARS-CoV-2 (NCCP43326) or mock inoculum at 50 pfu/well. After blue light irradiation, the inhibitory effect was assessed by qPCR and plaque reduction assay. When Vero cells were irradiated to blue light ranging from 1.6 to 10 J cm-2 , SARS-CoV-2 replication was inhibited by up to 80%. The antiviral effect of blue light irradiation was associated with translation suppression via the phosphorylation of eIF2α by prolonging endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. The levels of LC3A/B and Beclin-1, which are key markers of autophagy, and the levels of PERK and PDI for ER stress were highly increased, whereas caspase-3 cleavage was inhibited after blue light irradiation in the later stage of infection. Our data revealed that blue light irradiation exerted antiviral and photo-biogoverning activities by prolonging ER stress and stimulating autophagy progression during viral infection. The findings increase our understanding of how photo-energy acts on viral progression and have implications for use in therapeutic strategies against COVID-19.

Affiliations

Phil-Sun Oh  1 , Kyung Won Kang  2 , Seung Rok Ryu  2 , SeokTae Lim  1 , Myung-Hee Sohn  1 , Sang-Myeong Lee  2   3 , Hwan-Jeong Jeong  1
1 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Molecular Imaging & Therapeutic Medicine Research Center, Biomedical Research Institute, Jeonbuk National University Medical School and Hospital, Jeonju, Korea.
2 Division of Biotechnology, College of Environmental and Bioresources, Jeonbuk National University, Iksan, Korea.
3 Laboratory of Veterinary Virology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Korea.