An international team of scientists say they have identified a compound that can fight coronaviruses, responsible for the SARS and MERS outbreaks, which currently have no cure.
Coronaviruses affect the upper and lower respiratory tracts in humans, and are the reason for up to a third of common colds.
A more severe strain of the virus, thought to have come from bats, triggered the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic in 2002, which killed nearly 800 people.
The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a new strain discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and thought to have originated in camels.
More deadly but less contagious, MERS has so far killed 193 people out of 636 confirmed cases.
Now, a team of scientists led by Edward Trybala from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Volker Thiel from the University of Bern, have discovered a compound called K22, which appears to block the ability of the virus to spread in humans.
"This finding is important in light of the fact that some emerging coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS... are potential pandemic-causing pathogens," Trybala said in an email to AFP.
In "our work we found a novel strategy to combat these viruses," he added.
The team screened 16,671 different compounds before realising that K22 could combat a weak form of coronavirus that causes mild cold-like symptoms.
They then went on to show that it can fight more serious strains, including SARS and MERS.
In an article for specialist journal PLOS Pathogens, the scientists explained that the virus reproduces in the cells that line the human respiratory system.
The virus takes over the membranes that separate different parts of human cells.
K22 acts at an early stage in this process, preventing the virus from taking control of the cell membranes and so opening up "new treatment possibilities," he said.
While K22 still has a way to go before it can be tested on humans, Trybala still believes "that identification of this new strategy of combating coronaviruses will aid to develop an effective and safe antiviral drug".
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