Since the initial report of the novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) emanating from Wuhan, China, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread globally. While the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection are not completely understood, there appears to be a wide spectrum of disease ranging from mild symptoms to severe respiratory distress, hospitalization, and mortality. There are no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatments for COVID-19 aside from remdesivir; early efforts to identify efficacious therapeutics for COVID-19 have mainly focused on drug repurposing screens to identify compounds with antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 in cellular infection systems. These screens have yielded intriguing hits, but the use of nonhuman immortalized cell lines derived from non-pulmonary or gastrointestinal origins poses any number of questions in predicting the physiological and pathological relevance of these potential interventions. While our knowledge of this novel virus continues to evolve, our current understanding of the key molecular and cellular interactions involved in SARS-CoV-2 infection is discussed in order to provide a framework for developing the most appropriate in vitro toolbox to support current and future drug discovery efforts.

Desorption electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (DESI-MS/MS) and whole-body autoradiography (WBA) were used for chemical imaging of whole-body thin tissue sections of mice intravenously dosed with propranolol (7.5 mg/kg). DESI-MS/MS imaging utilized selected reaction monitoring detection performed on an AB/MDS SCIEX 4000 QTRAP mass spectrometer equipped with a prototype extended length particle discriminator interface. Propranolol images of the tissue sections using DESI-MS/MS were obtained at surface scan rates of 0.1, 0.5, 2, and 7 mm/s. Although signal decreased with increasing scan rate, useful whole-body images for propranolol were obtained from the tissues even at 7 mm/s, which required just 79 min of analysis time. Attempts to detect and image the distribution of the known propranolol metabolites were unsuccessful. Regions of the tissue sections showing the most radioactivity from WBA sections were excised and analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with radiochemical detection to determine relative levels of propranolol and metabolites present. Comparison of the DESI-MS/MS signal for propranolol and the radioactivity attributed to propranolol from WBA sections indicated nominal agreement between the two techniques for the amount of propranolol in the brain, lung, and liver. Data from the kidney showed an unexplained disparity between the two techniques. The results of this study show the feasibility of using DESI-MS/MS to obtain useful chemical images of a drug in whole-body thin tissue sections following drug administration at a pharmacologically relevant level. Further optimization to improve sensitivity and enable detection of the drug metabolites will be among the requirements necessary to move DESI-MS/MS chemical imaging forward as a practical tool in drug discovery.

The catalytic triad in caspase-8 comprises Cys360, His317 and the backbone carbonyl oxygen atom of Arg258, which points towards the Nepsilon atom of His317. The oxygen atom attached to the tetrahedral carbon in the thiohemiacetal group of the inhibitor is hydrogen bonded to Ndelta of His317, and is not in a region characteristic of a classical 'oxyanion hole'. The N-acetyl group of the inhibitor is in the trans configuration. The caspase-8-inhibitor structure provides the basis for understanding structure/function relationships in this important initiator of the proteolytic cascade that leads to programmed cell death.

A self-aspirating, liquid microjunction surface sampling probe/electrospray emitter mass spectrometry system was demonstrated for use in the direct analysis of spotted and dosed drugs and their metabolites in thin tissue sections. Proof-of-principle sampling and analysis directly from tissue without the need for sample preparation was demonstrated first by raster scanning a region on a section of rat liver onto which reserpine was spotted. The mass spectral signal from selected reaction monitoring was used to develop a chemical image of the spotted drug on the tissue. The probe was also used to selectively spot sample areas of sagittal whole-body tissue from a mouse that had been dosed orally (90 mg/kg) with R,S-sulforaphane 3 h prior to sacrifice. Sulforaphane and its glutathione and N-acetyl cysteine conjugates were monitored with selected reaction monitoring and detected in the stomach and various other tissues from the dosed mouse. No signal for these species was observed in the tissue from a control mouse. The same dosed-tissue section was used to illustrate the possibility of obtaining a lane scan across the whole-body section. In total, these results illustrate the potential for rapid screening of the distribution of drugs and metabolites in thin tissue sections with the liquid micro-junction surface sampling probe/electrospray mass spectrometry approach. Published in 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.