Recent discovery and development of inhibitors targeting coronaviruses

COVID-19, an emerging coronavirus infection: advances and prospects in designing and developing vaccines, immunotherapeutics, and therapeutics

“…The time required for drug discovery programs to develop, evaluate, and obtain approval for a new potent anti-COVID-19 agent could take more than 10 years. 4 In the present scenario, the development of a new therapeutic agent for COVID-19 is not a feasible option with regard to available time. Another option is to repurpose broadly acting antiviral drugs used for other viral infections.…”

“…Such drugs have the advantage of easy availability, known pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, solubility, stability, side effects, and also well-established dosing regimens. 4 Repurposed drugs are potential therapeutic options managing CoV infections. Repurposed drugs such as lopinavir/ ritonavir and interferon-1β possess in vitro anti-MERS-CoV activity.…”

“…Neither vaccines nor direct-acting antiviral drugs are available for the treatment of human and animal coronavirus infections. [2][3][4] Many efforts have been directed to develop vaccines against human CoV infections in recent decades, but a limiting factor is the degree of cross-protection rendered by these vaccines due to their extensive sequence diversity. 5 Various vaccines, immunotherapeutics, and drug options have been explored during the recent threats of Zika, Ebola, and Nipah viruses [6][7][8] as well as against previous CoVs including SARS-and MERS-CoVs.…”

“…5 Various vaccines, immunotherapeutics, and drug options have been explored during the recent threats of Zika, Ebola, and Nipah viruses [6][7][8] as well as against previous CoVs including SARS-and MERS-CoVs. 3,5,[9][10][11][12] These valuable options can be exploited for their potency, efficacy, and safety along with expediting other ongoing research 2,4,[13][14][15] so as to discover valuable modalities for tackling the emerging COVID-19, but as yet there is no effective vaccine or therapeutic, for which intense efforts are ongoing.…”

Emerging novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)—current scenario, evolutionary perspective based on genome analysis and recent developments

“…Further evaluation is required before confirming the efficacy of such combination therapy. A variety of different therapeutic and vaccine designing approaches against coronaviruses are being explored and yet to be evaluated in terms of their potency, efficacy and safety, but hopefully the process of evaluation will be accelerated in the coming days (Cyranoski 2020;Lu 2020;Pillaiyar et al 2020;Zaher et al 2020).…”