Figure 3.

Antiviral effect of modified heparin: (a) Modified heparin inhibits virus transduction of human adenovirus 5 (HAdV5) in HeLa cells. The mean fluorescent intensity (MFI) shows significantly lower transduction efficiencies after treatment with modified heparin compared to untreated control. For statistical analyses one-way ANOVA was performed, displayed are means + standard deviation. ** p-values ≤ 0.005; **** p-values ≤ 0.00005; (b) Measurements of herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) on Vero cells showed decreased transduction efficiencies after treatment with heparin/MgCl₂ at different time points: t = −24 h (24 h before transduction), t = 0 h (at the time point of transduction) and t = +1 h (1 h after transduction). As control we compared the results with aciclovir treated cells (t = 0 h). Percentage of GFP-positive cells and mean fluorescent intensity (MFI) are displayed. For statistical analyses one-way ANOVA was performed, displayed are means + standard deviation. **** p-values ≤ 0.00005. pos. control: untreated virus; neg. control: cells without virus; RLU: relative light units; vpc: viral particle numbers per cell; (c) Antiviral effect against SARS-CoV-2. Viral load in vitro in Vero E6 cells 24 h post-transduction with SARS-CoV-2 in the presence or absence of magnesium-modified heparin. Vero E6 cells supplemented either with or without modified heparin were infected with 5 × 101 TCID50 of SARS-CoV2 per well (day 0); (d) Viral load in the cell culture supernatants analyzed by RT-qPCR (left panel) and RT-ddPCR (right panel) 24 h post-transduction. Supernatants of infected Vero E6 cells from experiment c, cultivated in the presence/absence of magnesium-modified heparin were collected and subjected to RT-qPCR and RT-ddPCR analysis. Experiments are from n = 10 biological replicates. Evaluation and graphical representation were carried out with GraphPad (Version 8.3.1, San Diego, CA, USA), p-values from student t-test (equal distribution, two-sided): **** p < 0.00005 and ** p < 0.005.