This study was launched to assess COVID-19-related knowledge, attitude and practice among hospital and community pharmacists in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: Self-administered questionnaire was distributed to pharmacists working in hospitals and community pharmacies by physically delivering the questionnaire to study subjects. Data collected were entered into and analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics ® Version 25. Binary logistic analysis was used to determine the association between independent and outcome variables. Results: All 295 participants who completed the survey stated that they had heard about COVID-19. Almost all of the participants were aware of the causative agent, the clinical manifestations and the ways of transmission of COVID-19. Most participants (92.2%) identified elderly individuals as one of the high-risk groups for severe complications and death while 89.5% identified supportive therapy and life support as recommended management options to date. More than half (53.2%) of the respondents were found to have adequate knowledge about COVID-19. Among respondents, 89.8% had a positive attitude on the importance of following WHO recommendations in reducing the transmission of COVID-19. Only 9.8% had confidence in the capacity of healthcare facilities in the country to properly handle potential COVID-19 pandemic. Inadequate protective measures were taken to protect the staff from COVID-19 in the institutions of 70.2% of the participants. Among the WHO recommended prevention measures, hand washing was exercised by 97.3% of the study participants. Conclusion: The study findings confirmed that there is a high level of knowledge on each specific aspect of COVID-19 among the study participants. However, only about half of the participants had adequate knowledge about the disease. The pharmacists showed a predominantly positive attitude towards the importance of WHO recommendations and predominantly negative attitude towards the country's capacity to deal with the pandemic. The practice related to COVID-19 was inadequate at institutional level. Nevertheless, most of the pharmacists individually exercised self-protective measures against COVID-19. All stakeholders should work on ensuring the adequate supply of materials and services that aid in controlling the pandemic.

Novel coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and it speedily expanded globally. Some medications which are used to treat other diseases seem to be effective in treating COVID-19 even without explicit support. The existing drugs that are summarized in this review primarily focused on therapeutic agents that possessed activity against other RNA viruses such as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. Drug repurposing or repositioning is a promising field in drug discovery that identifies new therapeutic opportunities for existing drugs such as corticosteroids, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase inhibitors, interferons, protease inhibitors, ivermectin, melatonin, teicoplanin, and some others. A search for new drug/drug targets is underway. Thus, blocking coronavirus structural protein, targeting viral enzyme, dipeptidyl peptidase 4, and membrane fusion blocker (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 and CD147 inhibitor) are major sites based on molecular targets for the management of COVID-19 infection. The possible impact of biologics for the management of COVID19 is promising and includes a wide variety of options such as cytokines, nucleic acid-based therapies targeting virus gene expression, bioengineered and vectored antibodies, and various types of vaccines. This review demonstrates that the available data are not sufficient to suggest any treatment for the eradication of COVID-19 to be used at the clinical level. This article aims to review the roles of existing drugs and drug targets for COVID-19 treatment.

In December 2019, a highly transmissible, pneumonia epidemic caused by a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), erupted in China and other countries, resulting in devastation and health crisis worldwide currently. The search and using existing drugs support to curb the current highly contagious viral infection is spirally increasing since the pandemic began. This is based on these drugs had against other related RNA-viruses such as MERS–Cov, and SARS-Cov. Moreover, researchers are scrambling to identify novel drug targets and discover novel therapeutic options to vanquish the current pandemic. Since there is no definitive treatment to control Covid-19 vaccines are remain to be a lifeline. Currently, many vaccine candidates are being developed with most of them are reported to have positive results. Therapeutic targets such as helicases, transmembrane serine protease 2, cathepsin L, cyclin G-associated kinase, adaptor-associated kinase 1, two-pore channel, viral virulence factors, 3-chymotrypsin-like protease, suppression of excessive inflammatory response, inhibition of viral membrane, nucleocapsid, envelope, and accessory proteins, and inhibition of endocytosis were identified as a potential target against COVID-19 infection. This review also summarizes plant-based medicines for the treatment of COVID-19 such as saposhnikoviae divaricata, lonicerae japonicae flos, scutellaria baicalensis, lonicera japonicae, and some others. Thus, this review aimed to focus on the most promising therapeutic targets being repurposed against COVID-19 and viral elements that are used in COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

Despite recent advances in cancer diagnosis, prevention, detection, as well as management, the disease is expected to be the top cause of death globally. The chemotherapy approach for cancer has become more advanced in its design, yet no medication can cure enough against all types of cancer and its stage. Thus, this review aimed to summarize a recent development of new therapeutic agents and novel drug targets for the treatment of cancer. Several obstacles stand in the way of effective cancer treatment and drug development, including inaccessibility of tumor site by appropriate drug concentration, debilitating untoward effects caused by non-selective tissue distribution of chemotherapeutic agents, and occurrence of drug resistance, which leads to cross-resistance to a variety of drugs. Resistance to treatment with anticancer drugs results from multiple factors and the most common reason for acquiring drug resistance is marking and expelling drugs that prevent cancer cells to be targeted by chemotherapeutic agents. Moreover, insensitivity to drug-induced apoptosis, alteration, and mutation of drug target and interference/change of DNA replication are other main causes of treatment failure.

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