Therapeutic Targets and Computational Approaches on Drug Development for COVID-19

Curr Top Med Chem. 2020;20(24):2210-2220. doi: 10.2174/1568026620666200710105507.

Abstract

World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) as pandemic. Its outbreak started in China in Dec 2019 and rapidly spread all over the world. SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 800,000 people and caused about 35,000 deaths so far, moreover, no approved drugs are available to treat COVID-19. Several investigations have been carried out to identify potent drugs for COVID-19 based on drug repurposing, potential novel compounds from ligand libraries, natural products, short peptides, and RNAseq analysis. This review is focused on three different aspects; (i) targets for drug design (ii) computational methods to identify lead compounds and (iii) drugs for COVID-19. It also covers the latest literature on various hit molecules proposed by computational methods and experimental techniques.

Keywords: COVID-19; Chymotrypsin-like protease; Coronavirus; Drug repurposing; Papain-like protease; Polymerase; SARS-CoV-2; Spike protein.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Antiviral Agents / chemistry
  • Antiviral Agents / pharmacology*
  • COVID-19
  • COVID-19 Drug Treatment
  • Computational Biology
  • Coronavirus Infections / drug therapy*
  • Drug Design
  • Humans
  • Molecular Docking Simulation
  • Pandemics
  • Pneumonia, Viral / drug therapy*
  • Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus / antagonists & inhibitors

Substances

  • Antiviral Agents
  • Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus
  • spike protein, SARS-CoV-2