A review of potential suggested drugs for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment

The latest pandemic, coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), is associated with high prevalence and easy transmission, which is expanding globally with no conventional treatment or vaccine. The new virus revealed 79% and 50% genomic similarities with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), respectively. Accordingly, since the disease resists testing and adopting new therapeutics, repositioning pre-existing drugs may present a fast and attractive strategy with known safety, characteristics, and dosage used. However, they are not specific and targeted. Therefore, several drugs have been investigated for their efficacy and safety in the treatment of COVID-19; most of them are undergoing clinical trials. This article summarizes clinical investigations of potential therapeutic drugs used as COVID-19 therapy. Subsequently, it prepares a pattern of results and therapeutic targets to help further experiment designs. We have investigated drugs as classified in the following three groups; 1) The drugs which computationally showed effectiveness (in silico) but needed further lab confirmations; 2) Emetine, Teicoplanin, and Nelfinavir have shown effectiveness in vitro; 3) The drugs currently under clinical trial.

Automated summary

The latest COVID-19 pandemic has no conventional treatment or vaccine, leading to investigations on the repositioning of existing drugs as potential therapeutic options. Many drugs are currently undergoing clinical trials for efficacy and safety in treating COVID-19.