Repurposing of Chemotherapeutics to Combat COVID-19

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel strain of SARS coronavirus. The COVID-19 disease caused by this virus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). SARS-CoV-2 mainly spreads through droplets sprayed by coughs or sneezes of the infected to a healthy person within the vicinity of 6 feet. It also spreads through asymptomatic carriers and has negative impact on the global economy, security and lives of people since 2019. Numerous lives have been lost to this viral infection; hence there is an emergency to build up a potent measure to combat SARS-CoV-2. In view of the non-availability of any drugs or vaccines at the time of its eruption, the existing antivirals, antibacterials, antimalarials, mucolytic agents and antipyretic paracetamol were used to treat the COVID-19 patients. Still there are no specific small molecule chemotherapeutics available to combat COVID-19 except for a few vaccines approved for emergency use only. Thus, the repurposing of chemotherapeutics with the potential to treat COVID-19 infected people is being used. The antiviral activity for COVID-19 and biochemical mechanisms of the repurposed drugs are being explored by the biological assay screening and structure-based in silico docking simulations. The present study describes the various US-FDA approved chemotherapeutics repositioned to combat COVID-19 along with their screening for biological activity, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic evaluation.

QSPR Study and Distance-Based New Topological Descriptors of Some Drugs Used in the COVID-19 Treatment

“…Also, the following articles are noteworthy in the research of drugs repurposed against SARS-CoV-2. Nandi et al [13] studied various US-FDAapproved chemotherapeutics repositioned to combat COVID-19 spread. Nandi et al [14] performed a docking analysis of 34 drugs which include antivirals and antimalarials and discussed extensively the mode of interactions of these ligands towards the COVID-19 protease target.…”

Recent advances in computational drug discovery for therapy against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

“…In the last few years, computational chemistry tools have been extensively employed to guide the development of therapy against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) [1][2][3]. Several computationally targeting strategies have been suggested, ranging from re-docking of existing FDA-approved drugs aiming for drug repurposing against COVID-19 up to target-specific in silico screening of new small-molecules able to block critical viral proteases, such as Mpro and PLpro, avoiding maturation of proteins crucial for the virus life cycle [2,[4][5][6][7].…”