Quercetin has been associated with several health benefits, including the reduction of risk for heart disease, cancer and degenerative brain disorders, among others.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at the St. Catharines-based Biolyse Pharma Corporation<\/a>, Director Claude Mercure and pharmaceutical consultant John Fulton were inspired by a February 2020 article<\/a> they saw in Maclean\u2019s <\/em>about quercetin research being conducted by Michel Chr\u00e9tien, researcher at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal (IRCM).<\/p>\n Chr\u00e9tien and his team were looking at whether a certain component of quercetin could fight COVID-19 and other viruses.<\/p>\n Like Dudding, Fulton, Quercetin Project Partner at Biolyse, read voraciously and approached researchers around the globe investigating quercetin, forming research groups he created on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n John Fulton, Quercetin Project Partner at Biolyse Pharma Corporation.<\/p><\/div>\n Fulton was particularly intrigued by research from Turkey<\/a> and Saudi Arabia<\/a>, among other places, showing that quercetin has the potential to prevent and treat COVID-19.<\/p>\n He and his project partners at the company, excited about the possibility of creating a quercetin product, looked closer to home to make this happen.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been following Dr. Dudding\u2019s work for quite a while,\u201d says Fulton. \u201cHe\u2019s interesting, passionate about chemistry and he\u2019s training the next generation of researchers.\u201d<\/p>\n With a $50,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Brock and Biolyse Pharma Corporation have formed a research partnership that aims to create a quercetin product to be used in the fight against COVID-19.<\/p>\n Dudding\u2019s research team includes PhD student Ivor Smajlagic and master\u2019s students Rozhin Rowshanpour and Srini Vemulapalli.<\/p>\n When the body is exposed to COVID-19, the coronavirus binds itself to an enzyme called the ACE-2 receptor, which enables the virus to enter a cell. The virus then \u201chijacks\u201d the cell by replacing its RNA with material that produces more viruses.<\/p>\n To bind to the ACE-2 receptor, the virus needs a protein called the S-protein.<\/p>\n \u201cQuercetin is believed to disrupt the S-protein,\u201d says Dudding. \u201cPreventing the coronavirus from binding to the ACE-2 receptor is critical in preventing it from entering human cells and, therefore, preventing infection.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem with quercetin is that it\u2019s not very soluble in water. This means that very little of the quercetin would be made available to the body.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re hoping to do with this research is to be able to modify the quercetin to increase its water solubility and bioavailability so that it can be used as part of a protocol to treat COVID-19,\u201d says Dudding.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/John-Fulton.jpg\")