Florida International University has been granted a U.S. patent for a compound derived from linseed oil that inhibits viral infections including HIV and SARS-CoV-2, along with the bacteria behind strep and staph infections. The patent, "Treatment and Prevention of Infections Using Vegetable Oil-Derived Polyols" (U.S. Patent No. 12,440,467), builds on the team's earlier nanogel work, which was patented in 2022.
The compound is a polyol, a chemically modified substance made from food-grade linseed oil, the same flaxseed oil sold in grocery stores and pharmacies. Using computational modeling, lead researcher Vashist and colleagues found the polyol binds to the same regions of HIV and the COVID-19 virus that existing antiviral drugs target, blocking the viruses from entering human cells. Vashist described it as a compound that could be added to existing treatments to give them broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties without harming healthy cells, and one that could be formulated as pills, lozenges, aerosols or sterile solutions.
The Alzheimer's connection comes from a separate property of the material. According to the FIU team, the polyol improves the ability of nanocarriers to cross the blood-brain barrier, the biological gatekeeper that keeps most drugs out of brain tissue and has frustrated neurological drug development for decades. Vashist recently received an NIH R03 grant from the National Institute on Aging to test linseed polyol-based nanogels as a possible Alzheimer's treatment. The compound is also fluorescent, which lets researchers track it during imaging and confirm whether a drug is actually reaching its target.
What makes the approach appealing on paper is its economics: linseed oil is renewable, plant-based and cheap, and the resulting polyol is biodegradable and can be manufactured at industrial scale. That said, the work described here covers a patent and laboratory and computational findings, not human trials. The Alzheimer's application in particular is at the exploratory grant stage, and moving from a promising molecule to an approved therapy is a long road. Contributors to the patent include FIU researchers Hitendra Chand, Madhavan Nair, Andrea Raymond and Prem Chapagain, with funding in part from the National Institutes of Health.