SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and Advances in Developing Potential Therapeutics and Vaccines to Counter this Emerging Pandemic Virus – A Review

Abstract

A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), causing an emerging coronavirus disease (COVID-19), first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China has resulted in an outbreak in China which has taken a catastrophic turn with high toll rates in China and subsequently spreading across the globe. The rapid spread of this virus to more than 175 countries while affecting nearly 500,000 persons and causing more than 22,000 human deaths, it has resulted in a pandemic situation in the world. The SARS-CoV-2 virus belongs to the genus Betacoronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, all of which originated in bats. It is highly contagious, causing symptoms like fever, dyspnea, asthenia and pneumonia, thrombocytopenia and the severely infected patients succumb to the disease. Coronaviruses (CoVs) among all known RNA viruses have the largest genomes ranging from 26 to 32 kb in length. Extensive research has been conducted to understand the molecular basis of the SARS-CoV-2 infection and evolution, develop effective therapeutics, antiviral drugs and vaccines, and to design rapid and confirmatory viral diagnostics as well as adopt appropriate prevention and control strategies. Till date, no clinically proclaimed, proven therapeutic antibodies or specific drugs and therapeutics, and vaccines have turned up. Several molecular diagnostic tests such as Real Time-PCR, isothermal loop-mediated amplification of coronavirus (i-LACO), full genome analysis by next-generation sequencing (NGS), multiplex nucleic acid amplification, and microarray-based assays are in use currently for the laboratory confirmation of this CoV infection. In this review article, we describe the basic molecular organization and phylogenetic analysis of the coronaviruses, including the SARS-CoV-2, and recent advances in diagnosis and vaccine development in brief and focusing mainly on developing potential therapeutic options that can be explored to manage this pandemic virus infection, which would help in valid countering of COVID-19.

In Silico Trial to test COVID-19 candidate vaccines: a case study with UISS platform

“…Currently, there are at least 42 vaccine candidates around the world under development and evaluation at different stages against COVID-19 [14], also accordingly from what reported by WHO through its continuously undergoing landscapes documents concerning the COVID-19 candidate vaccines. These promising vaccine candidates deal with several vaccine technologies based on recombinant protein subunits [15], nucleic acids [16], non-replicating and replicating viral vectors [17], [18], protein constructs [19], virus-like particles [20], liveattenuated virus strains [21], inactivated virus [14], or human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) [22].…”

Flavonoids: A complementary approach to conventional therapy of COVID-19?

“…Even though the SARS and MERS outbreaks stimulated research on human CoVs, there are, to date, no antiviral therapeutics available that specifically target these viruses (Rabaan et al 2020). Several potential vaccines, including recombinant attenuated viruses, live virus vectors, or individual viral proteins expressed from DNA plasmids, have been developed for SARS-CoV; however, none of them are yet approved for clinical use (Fehr and Perlman 2015).…”

Pandemic Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): Challenges and A Global Perspective

“…The 'One health approach' is one such initiative that incorporates the preventive strategies for the emergence of zoonosis in all three arms; humans, animals, and the environment [142,143]. and others, as well as from the advances in science and technology in the modern era, to halt the further spread of this virus and to restrain COVID-19 [117,[145][146][147][148][149][150][151][152].…”