Recognition of Plausible Therapeutic Agents to Combat COVID-19: An Omics Data Based Combined Approach

Abstract

Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has become an immense threat to global public health. The causative agent of this disease is a novel zoonotic pathogen called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome related Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Since this is a newly evolved pathogen, very limited information is available to develop effective therapeutics against this deadly virus. Although bioinformatics based analysis could be handy to unveil drugs or vaccines against bacteria and fungus, such approaches are hardly seen for acellular viruses. However, in this study we rationally merged several powerful in silico techniques and proposed prospective therapeutics based on available omics data for COVID-19. Through meticulous analysis of conserved regions of 67 SARS-CoV-2 strains, spike and membrane glycoproteins were chosen to develop and propose a chimeric vaccine against this virus. siRNAs were also designed against these glycoprotein genes to silence them. Moreover, six drug compound candidates were suggested to inhibit the conserved RNA-directed RNA polymerase protein. Finally, due to the close relationship of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV, publicly available gene expression datasets of SARS-CoV were analyzed to identify 13 immunoregulatory genes that might develop interferon based therapy. Our study will quicken the researches among pharmaceuticals, researchers and clinicians to develop rapid therapeutics for controlling this notorious pandemic disease. Authors Mohammad Uzzal Hossain, Arittra Bhattacharjee, Md. Tabassum Hossain Emon, and Zeshan Mahmud Chowdhury contributed equally to this work.

Genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants in Delhi reveals alterations in immunogenic regions in spike glycoprotein

“…NICPR13). This mutation is present in the C-terminal and it has no evidential effect on dimerization (25). F307L and D343G are unique mutations in samples NICPR293 and NICPR13 respectively, for which experimentation is required to establish their functional attributes.…”

Novel Mutations in NSP1 and PLPro of SARS-CoV-2 NIB-1 Genome Mount for Effective Therapeutics

“…These pathogens were the causative agents of SARS and MERS epidemics. SARS-CoV-2, a member of Betacoronavirus, shares nearly 82.30% sequence similarity with SARS-CoV-1 while showing strikingly less similarity with MERS (28%) [9]. SARS-CoV-2 has a 29.9 kb single-stranded (+) positive RNA genome with 11 genes.…”

Comparative genomic study for revealing the complete scenario of COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh

“…The genome sequences of SARS-Cov-2 has a 79.6% identity with SARS-CoV/ SARS-CoV-1 and 67.06% identity with MERS-CoV, indicating that they belong to the betacoronavirus genus. [21] All human coronaviruses are considered to be of zoonotic origin, with Chinese bats being the most likely host for SARS-CoV-2 [22]- [24]. Genetically, about 96% identity was observed between SARS-CoV-2 and bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13).…”

“…The betacoronavirus genus is comprised of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-CoV which had been identified for the first time in 2002-2003 and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)-CoV in 2012. The genome sequences of SARS-Cov-2 has a 79.6% identity with SARS-CoV/ SARS-CoV-1 and 67.06% identity with MERS-CoV, indicating that they belong to the betacoronavirus genus [22]. All human coronaviruses are considered to be of zoonotic origin, with Chinese bats being the most likely host for SARS-CoV-2 [23]- [25].…”