Very cool science: broad spectrum anti-viral

I saw this initially on /., and it linked to PLoS. PLoS is a great system BTW, and I’d love to see Physics, Engineering, CS, and other things join in. arxiv.org serves a similar function (rapid publication) though it isn’t peer reviewed prior to publication, while PLoS is. Basically, this anti-viral appears to show excellent efficacy across multiple virus infections … everything from Dengue Fever to Rhinovirus (common cold). It would be wonderful if this technique would be active against retroviruses (HIV, etc.) but the technique appears to target a specific pathway used by a number of viruses for their own nefarious ends. Specifically they hijack the apoptosis mechanism, and prevent the cell from killing itself as it is taken over during the infection phase. The ‘drug’ works by mediating this, and effectively enabling the killing of the cell. Infected cells die. The other cool aspect of this is that it can be used as a preventative measure against certain viral infections. This is cool, and hopefully the fundamental mechanism can be used against many things.