Current Potential Therapeutic Approaches against SARS-CoV-2: A Review

Abstract

The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a serious threat to public health worldwide and, to date, no effective treatment is available. Thus, we herein review the pharmaceutical approaches to SARS-CoV-2 infection treatment. Numerous candidate medicines that can prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection and replication have been proposed. These medicines include inhibitors of serine protease TMPRSS2 and angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). The S protein of SARS-CoV-2 binds to the receptor in host cells. ACE2 inhibitors block TMPRSS2 and S protein priming, thus preventing SARS-CoV-2 entry to host cells. Moreover, antiviral medicines (including the nucleotide analogue remdesivir, the HIV protease inhibitors lopinavir and ritonavir, and wide-spectrum antiviral antibiotics arbidol and favipiravir) have been shown to reduce the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 as well as morbidity and mortality associated with COVID-19.

SARS-CoV-2 Permissive Glioblastoma Cell Line for High Throughput Antiviral Screening

“…A 12 amino acid flexible protein linker and a modified 11 th betasheet of mNeonGreen (19) were added at its C-terminus. pcDNA3.1.mNG2(1-10) was generated through gibson assembly (NEBuilder, New England Biolabs) of a pcDNA3.1 vector (Thermo Fisher Scientific), amplified by PCR, and a PCR fragment of the first 10 betasheets of a modified mNeonGreen, synthesized by Genscript. Plasmids were sequence-verified with Sanger sequencing (Macrogen Europe, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) before use.…”

“…Major efforts are ongoing to develop novel therapeutics for COVID-19 treatment and/or effective prophylactic approaches to prevent viral spread (1). In the context of early preclinical studies for antiviral assessment, screening platforms for drug libraries rely on the use of robust cellular infection systems, mostly based on immortalized cell lines originating from respiratory, but most often non-respiratory, tissues (2).…”

Review of Developments in Combating COVID-19 by Vaccines, Inhibitors, Radiations, and Nonthermal Plasma

“…The superimposition of previously published SARS-CoV-2 3CL-pro structures with bound GC376 is shown in Figure 3 d. N3, formerly known as the Michael acceptor inhibitor, was created with a computer-aided method. N3 has shown significant antiviral efficacy against infectious bronchitis viruses in an animal model and can selectively inhibit the Mopar of numerous coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV [ 56 , 57 , 58 ]. SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro was demonstrated to establish a covalent link with N3, acting as an irreversible inhibitor of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV 3CLpro.…”

SARS-CoV-2 Permissive glioblastoma cell line for high throughput antiviral screening

“…Major efforts are ongoing to develop novel therapeutics for COVID-19 treatment and/or effective prophylactic approaches to prevent viral spread ( Yadav et al, 2021 ). In the context of early preclinical studies for SARS-CoV-2 antiviral assessment, screening platforms for drug libraries rely on the use of robust cellular infection systems, mostly based on immortalized cell lines originating from respiratory, but most often non-respiratory, tissues ( Murgolo et al, 2021 ; Uemura et al, 2021 ; Chiu et al, 2022 ; Ramirez et al, 2021 ; Grau-Exposito et al, 2022 ; Ko et al, 2021 ; Chu et al, 2020 ).…”