Drug Repurposing for COVID-19: A Review and a Novel Strategy to Identify New Targets and Potential Drug Candidates

Molecules

Renata Bento Cunha¹  Tatiana Vassilevskaia¹  Celso Cunha¹  Liliana Rodrigues¹  Miguel Viveiros¹ 

[1] Global Health and Tropical Medicine, Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Rua da Junqueira 100, 1349-008 Lisboa, Portugal;

关键词: SARS-CoV-2;    COVID-19;    drug repurposing;    computer-aided drug discovery;   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules27092723

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In December 2019, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified in the province of Wuhan, China. Since then, there have been over 400 million confirmed cases and 5.8 million deaths by COVID-19 reported worldwide. The urgent need for therapies against SARS-CoV-2 led researchers to use drug repurposing approaches. This strategy allows the reduction in risks, time, and costs associated with drug development. In many cases, a repurposed drug can enter directly to preclinical testing and clinical trials, thus accelerating the whole drug discovery process. In this work, we will give a general overview of the main developments in COVID-19 treatment, focusing on the contribution of the drug repurposing paradigm to find effective drugs against this disease. Finally, we will present our findings using a new drug repurposing strategy that identified 11 compounds that may be potentially effective against COVID-19. To our knowledge, seven of these drugs have never been tested against SARS-CoV-2 and are potential candidates for in vitro and in vivo studies to evaluate their effectiveness in COVID-19 treatment.

【 授权许可】

Unknown