Repurposing Covid-19 Drug : Current Issues

Abstract

The deadly contagious Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) does not currently have any available treatments. As a method of discovering therapeutic agents, drug repurposing involves adapting approved and investigational drugs for new purposes. It is considered as a very effective method for drug discovery because it takes much less time and money as compared to denovo drug discovery. The aim of this study is to discuss COVID-19's repurposing efficacy, pharmacokinetics, and safety, as well as its future, the objective is to provide a to-the-point review of current literature regarding efficacy of repurposed drugs against COVID-19 and other respiratory infections caused by coronaviruses. For the review, experimental studies conducted in-silico, in-vitro, in-vivo, clinical trials in humans, case reports, and news archives were selected. A number of drugs such as favipiravir, ribavirin, lopinavir, ritonavir, darunavir, arbidol, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, interferons, etc have shown inhibitory effects against the SARS-CoV2invitroas well as in clinical conditions. Drugs either act by targeting virus-related mechanisms like RNA genomes, polypeptide packaging pathways, and uptake pathways, or by targeting host-related mechanisms such as angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptors and inflammatory pathways. Using the basic knowledge of viral pathogenesis and pharmacodynamics of drugs as well as using computational tools, many drugs are currently in pipeline to be repurposed. In the current scenario, repositioning of the drugs could be considered the new avenue for the treatment of COVID-19.In the future, these results may lead to the repurposing of drugs to treat emerging viral diseases.