Perspectives for repurposing drugs for the coronavirus disease 2019

Perspectives for repurposing drugs for the coronavirus disease 2019

Raman R. Gangakhedkar, Balram Bhargava, Megha Agrawal, Atanu Basu, Priya Abraham, Sarah S Cherian

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.

2020

coronavirus - covid-19 - drugs - host-based - repurposing - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 - virus-based

DOI: 10.4103/ijmr.IJMR_585_20

Indian Journal of Medical Research

Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications

Medicine