A siRNA targets and inhibits a broad range of SARS-CoV-2 infections including Delta variant

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants has altered the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and raised some uncertainty on long term efficiency of vaccine strategy. The development of new therapeutics against a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants is imperative. We here have designed an inhalable siRNA, C6G25S, which covers 99.8% of current SARS-CoV-2 variants and is capable of inhibiting dominant strains, including Alpha, Delta, Gamma and Epsilon, at picomolar ranges of IC50 in vitro. Moreover, C6G25S could completely inhibit the production of infectious virions in lungs by prophylactic treatment, and decrease 96.2% of virions by co-treatment in K18-hACE2-transgenic mice, accompanying with a significant prevention of virus-associated extensive pulmonary alveolar damage, vascular thrombi, and immune cell infiltrations. Our data suggests that C6G25S provides an alternative and effective approach to combating the COVID-19 pandemic.