Newswise — Twelve years ago, cancer researchers at University of California San Diego identified a molecule that helps cancer cells survive by shuttling damaging inflammatory cells into tumor tissue. In new research, they show that the same molecule does the same thing in lung tissue infected with COVID-19 — and that the molecule can be suppressed with a repurposed cancer drug. The work, published in Science Translational Medicine , represents a new approach to preventing irreversible organ damage in infectious diseases like COVID-19 and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The two key players in this scenario are inflammatory cells called myeloid cells, and an enzyme called PI3K gamma (phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-kinase gamma). Myeloid cells belong to our innate immune system — the immunity we’re born with before we’re exposed to pathogens in the environment — and work very quickly to kill deadly agents like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. “Our work shows that drugs that can prevent the recruitment of damaging myeloid cells into tissues that are infected with severe agents like COVID-19 or MRSA have a significant benefit in preserving tissue function if given early enough in an infection,” says Judith Varner, Ph.

D., professor in the Departments of Pathology and Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, co-leader of the Solid Tumor Therapeutics program at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, and the study’s senior author. Most othe.