CoviRx: A User-Friendly Interface for Systematic Down-Selection of Repurposed Drug Candidates for COVID-19

Abstract

Although various vaccines are now commercially available, they have not been able to stop the spread of COVID-19 infection completely. An excellent strategy to get safe, effective, and affordable COVID-19 treatments quickly is to repurpose drugs that are already approved for other diseases. The process of developing an accurate and standardized drug repurposing dataset requires considerable resources and expertise due to numerous commercially available drugs that could be potentially used to address the SARS-CoV-2 infection. To address this bottleneck, we created the CoviRx.org platform. CoviRx is a user-friendly interface that allows analysis and filtering of large quantities of data, which is onerous to curate manually for COVID-19 drug repurposing. Through CoviRx, the curated data have been made open source to help combat the ongoing pandemic and encourage users to submit their findings on the drugs they have evaluated, in a uniform format that can be validated and checked for integrity by authenticated volunteers. This article discusses the various features of CoviRx, its design principles, and how its functionality is independent of the data it displays. Thus, in the future, this platform can be extended to include any other disease beyond COVID-19.

Intelligent Biological Networks: Improving Anti-Microbial Resistance Resilience through Nutritional Interventions to Understand Protozoal Gut Infections

“…The study used an ensemble algorithm to cross-validate antibody response from variable populations to predict pathogenic surveillance. These approaches, as reported previously by the CoviRx database for COVID-19 [ 132 ] in addition to multiomics, has the potential to provide much more rapid and reliable outcomes of nutritional solutions to protozoal MDR infection agents.…”

On Bisphosphonates and COVID-19: In Silico Model Suggests Inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 RdRp as Potential Explanation

“…Therefore, the quest to identify potential molecules to treat COVID-19 and PASC is still ongoing. We developed a systematic approach to catalogue all FDA/TGA approved drugs available in the Compounds Australia collection [25]; down-select 214 likely candidates [26]; evaluate in vitro/ex vivo efficacy of the top 12 leads [14]; and screen the 214 candidates using molecular modeling techniques to identify additional leads [27]. In our latter list is present a bisphosphonate molecule called alendronate, and we came across a parallel study which observed that humans who used alendronate (and another bisphosphonate called zoledronate) had lower odds ratios (typically 0.21-0.29) of testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 diagnosis and COVID-19-related hospitalization [28].…”

Use of Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocyte and Nasal Epithelium Models to Establish a Multi-Tissue Model Platform to Validate Repurposed Drugs Against SARS-CoV-2 Infection

“…We have recently employed an in silico approach to down-select nine approved drugs (plus three anti-SARS-CoV-2 control drugs) for assessment using a commercially-sourced ALI model of the human airway epithelium [11][12][13]. Five drugs that showed promise were further evaluated against both Delta and Omicron variants of concern (VOC), with fluvoxamine exhibiting anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity, albeit at concentrations higher than can be achieved in patients [13].…”