Perspectives for repurposing drugs for the coronavirus disease 2019

Abstract

The newly emerged 2019 novel coronavirus (CoV), named as severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2), like SARS-CoV (now, SARS-CoV-1) and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV), has been associated with high infection rates with over 36,405 deaths. In the absence of approved marketed drugs against coronaviruses, the treatment and management of this novel CoV disease (COVID-19) worldwide is a challenge. Drug repurposing that has emerged as an effective drug discovery approach from earlier approved drugs could reduce the time and cost compared to de novo drug discovery. Direct virus-targeted antiviral agents target specific nucleic acid or proteins of the virus while host-based antivirals target either the host innate immune responses or the cellular machineries that are crucial for viral infection. Both the approaches necessarily interfere with viral pathogenesis. Here we summarize the present status of both virus-based and host-based drug repurposing perspectives for coronaviruses in general and the SARS-CoV-2 in particular.

Drug repurposing: new strategies for addressing COVID-19 outbreak

“…Flavonoids. SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid inhibitors, RdRp gene blockers and virus translation inhibitors and are some examples of drugs proposed for COVID-19 treatment [8].…”

“…CYP blockers and 5. Immune response enhancers (nitazoxanide and interferons) are suggested for COVID-19 treatment [8].…”

Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19): An Updated Review

“…Ritonavir is a potent inhibitor of the metabolizing enzymes in vivo that are responsible for the extensive degradation of lopinavir. The co-administration of ritonavir boosts the activity of lopinavir by enhancing its exposure to virus and improves the antiviral activity 25 28 .…”

Virtual screening, ADMET prediction and dynamics simulation of potential compounds targeting the main protease of SARS-CoV-2

“…Some compounds have been found as a potential treatment against SARS CoV-2 in many studies (Caly et al, 2020;Elmezayen et al, 2020;Hendaus, 2020;Zhou et al, 2020). There are studies in which antiviral drugs such as Anti-HIV, Anti-HCV, Anti-HBV and drugs for other infectious diseases have been suggested as therapies (Barlow et al, 2020;Bhatnagar et al, 2020;Cherian et al, 2020;Fan et al, 2020;Sayad et al, 2020). Some of them have suggested that combinations of drugs may provide rapid viral clearance than the single agent alone (Cao et al, 2020;Sheahan et al, 2020).…”