Identification of potentially anti-COVID-19 active drugs using the connectivity MAP

PLoS One. 2022 Jan 27;17(1):e0262751. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262751. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Drug repurposing can be an interesting strategy for an emergency response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2, (SARS-COV-2), the causing agent of the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. For this, we applied the Connectivity Map (CMap) bioinformatic resource to identify drugs that generate, in the CMap database, gene expression profiles (GEP) that negatively correlate with a SARS-COV-2 GEP, anticipating that these drugs could antagonize the deleterious effects of the virus at cell, tissue or organism levels. We identified several anti-cancer compounds that target MDM2 in the p53 pathway or signaling proteins: Ras, PKBβ, Nitric Oxide synthase, Rho kinase, all involved in the transmission of proliferative and growth signals. We hypothesized that these drugs could interfere with the high rate of biomass synthesis in infected cells, a feature shared with cancer cells. Other compounds including etomoxir, triacsin-c, PTB1-IN-3, are known to modulate lipid metabolism or to favor catabolic reactions by activating AMPK. Four different anti-inflammatory molecules, including dexamethasone, fluorometholone and cytosporone-b, targeting the glucocorticoid receptor, cyclooxygenase, or NUR77 also came out of the analysis. These results represent a first step in the characterization of potential repositioning strategies to treat SARS-COV-2.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Anti-Inflammatory Agents / therapeutic use
  • Antineoplastic Agents / therapeutic use
  • Antiviral Agents / therapeutic use
  • COVID-19 Drug Treatment*
  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Databases, Genetic
  • Drug Repositioning / methods*
  • Gene Expression / drug effects
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Pandemics
  • Pharmaceutical Preparations
  • SARS-CoV-2 / drug effects*
  • SARS-CoV-2 / pathogenicity
  • Transcriptome / drug effects

Substances

  • Anti-Inflammatory Agents
  • Antineoplastic Agents
  • Antiviral Agents
  • Pharmaceutical Preparations

Grants and funding

This work is supported by institutional funds from Inserm. RB was recipient of a PhD fellowship from the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.