Therapeutic potential of compounds targeting SARS-CoV-2 helicase

Matthew T J Halma; Mark J A Wever; Sanne Abeln; Didier Roche; Gijs J L Wuite

doi:10.3389/fchem.2022.1062352

Therapeutic potential of compounds targeting SARS-CoV-2 helicase

Front Chem. 2022 Dec 6:10:1062352. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.1062352. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Matthew T J Halma^{1

2}, Mark J A Wever^{3

4}, Sanne Abeln⁵, Didier Roche⁴, Gijs J L Wuite¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
² LUMICKS B. V., Amsterdam, Netherlands.
³ DCM, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France.
⁴ Edelris, Lyon, France.
⁵ Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Abstract

The economical and societal impact of COVID-19 has made the development of vaccines and drugs to combat SARS-CoV-2 infection a priority. While the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has been widely explored as a drug target, the SARS-CoV-2 helicase (nsp13) does not have any approved medication. The helicase shares 99.8% similarity with its SARS-CoV-1 homolog and was shown to be essential for viral replication. This review summarizes and builds on existing research on inhibitors of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 helicases. Our analysis on the toxicity and specificity of these compounds, set the road going forward for the repurposing of existing drugs and the development of new SARS-CoV-2 helicase inhibitors.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; drug repurposing; helicase; natural products; nsp13; small-molecule inhibitors.