{"doi":"10.1101/2020.12.14.420133","title":"Targeting Scavenger Receptor Type B-1 (SR-B1) and Cholesterol Inhibits Entry of SARS-CoV-2 Pseudovirus in Cell Culture","abstract":"Abstract The novel human coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019 and has now caused a global pandemic. The disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 is known as COVID-19. To date, few treatments for COVID-19 have proven effective, and the current standard of care is primarily supportive. As a result, novel therapeutic strategies are in high demand. Viral entry into target cells is frequently sensitive to cell membrane lipid composition and membrane organization. Evidence suggests that cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 is most efficient when the target cell plasma membrane is replete with cholesterol; and recent data implicate cholesterol flux through the high-affinity receptor for cholesterol-rich high-density lipoprotein (HDL), called scavenger receptor type B-1 (SR-B1), as critical for SARS-CoV-2 entry. Here, we demonstrate that a cholesterol-poor synthetic biologic high-density lipoprotein (HDL NP) targets SR-B1 and inhibits cell entry of a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein pseudovirus. Human cells expressing SR-B1 are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and viral entry can be inhibited by 50-80% using HDL NPs in an SR-B1-dependent manner. These results indicate that HDL NP targeting of SR-B1 is a powerful potential therapy to combat COVID-19 and other viral diseases.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":122410,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.948,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":373843,"name":"Kaylin M. McMahon","orcid":"0000-0003-1130-9567","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301551,"name":"Nicole Palacio","orcid":"0000-0003-1229-5224","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563537,"name":"Pankaj Bhalla","orcid":"0000-0003-0514-7194","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301557,"name":"Pablo Penaloza‐MacMaster","orcid":"0000-0001-9986-4906","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":373844,"name":"C. Shad Thaxton","orcid":"0000-0002-4765-6213","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563536,"name":"Stephen E. Henrich","orcid":"0000-0003-2366-9519","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:51.076430Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}