Defective interfering particle

[24] During the coinfection of a host cell, a critical ratio will eventually be reached in which more viral factors are being used to produce the non-infectious DIPs than infectious particles.

In one example, scientists have used DIPs to create "protecting viruses", which attenuated the pathogenicity of an influenza A infection in mice, through inducing an interferon response, to a point that it was no longer lethal.

[28] For SARS-CoV-2, the first synthetic DIPs were made in 2020 [24] and the interference effect was used to generate therapeutic interfering particles (TIPs) that reduced pathogenesis and protected hamsters from serious disease.

One study demonstrates the relationship between a pathogen and its defective variant, showing how regulation of DI production allowed the virus to attenuate its own infectious replication, decreasing viral load and thus enhance its parasitic efficiency by preventing the host from dying too fast.

[10] Research has been conducted by virologists to learn more about the interference in infection of host cells and how DI genomes could potentially work as immunostimulatory antiviral agents.

[35] A 2014 article describes the pre-clinical work to test the immunostimulatory effectiveness of a DIP against influenza viruses by inducing the innate antiviral immune responses (i.e., interferon).