Interestingly, we observed that the treatment of ACE2-A549 cells with both BzATP and Tranilast significantly reduced the intracellular spike (S) expression level detected after 48 hours of infection, as compared to ACE2-A549 cells that were infected in presence of BzATP (Figure 5J), thus demonstrating that the purinergic receptor P2X7 acts upstream to NLRP3 inflammasome activation and dictates viral replication. Here, NLRP3 is linked to infection.