4.6 Review

Drug Repurposing for COVID-19: A Review and a Novel Strategy to Identify New Targets and Potential Drug Candidates

Journal

MOLECULES
Volume 27, Issue 9, Pages -

Publisher

MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/molecules27092723

Keywords

SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; drug repurposing; computer-aided drug discovery

Funding

  1. Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) [434]

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This article provides an overview of the main developments in COVID-19 treatment and the contribution of drug repurposing. It also introduces a new drug repurposing strategy and lists 11 compounds that may be effective against COVID-19.
In December 2019, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified in the province of Wuhan, China. Since then, there have been over 400 million confirmed cases and 5.8 million deaths by COVID-19 reported worldwide. The urgent need for therapies against SARS-CoV-2 led researchers to use drug repurposing approaches. This strategy allows the reduction in risks, time, and costs associated with drug development. In many cases, a repurposed drug can enter directly to preclinical testing and clinical trials, thus accelerating the whole drug discovery process. In this work, we will give a general overview of the main developments in COVID-19 treatment, focusing on the contribution of the drug repurposing paradigm to find effective drugs against this disease. Finally, we will present our findings using a new drug repurposing strategy that identified 11 compounds that may be potentially effective against COVID-19. To our knowledge, seven of these drugs have never been tested against SARS-CoV-2 and are potential candidates for in vitro and in vivo studies to evaluate their effectiveness in COVID-19 treatment.

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