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

Rodrigues, Liliana; Bento Cunha, Renata; Vassilevskaia, Tatiana; Viveiros, Miguel; Cunha, Celso

doi:10.3390/molecules27092723

Open AccessPerspective

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

by

Liliana Rodrigues

^*,†,

Renata Bento Cunha

^†,

Tatiana Vassilevskaia

,

Miguel Viveiros

and

Celso Cunha

Global Health and Tropical Medicine, Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Rua da Junqueira 100, 1349-008 Lisboa, Portugal

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

^†

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Molecules 2022, 27(9), 2723; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27092723

Submission received: 21 March 2022 / Revised: 14 April 2022 / Accepted: 21 April 2022 / Published: 23 April 2022

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drug Design and Discovery for Treatment of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19))

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Abstract

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.

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

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MDPI and ACS Style

Rodrigues, L.; Bento Cunha, R.; Vassilevskaia, T.; Viveiros, M.; Cunha, C. Drug Repurposing for COVID-19: A Review and a Novel Strategy to Identify New Targets and Potential Drug Candidates. Molecules 2022, 27, 2723. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27092723

AMA Style

Rodrigues L, Bento Cunha R, Vassilevskaia T, Viveiros M, Cunha C. Drug Repurposing for COVID-19: A Review and a Novel Strategy to Identify New Targets and Potential Drug Candidates. Molecules. 2022; 27(9):2723. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27092723

Chicago/Turabian Style

Rodrigues, Liliana, Renata Bento Cunha, Tatiana Vassilevskaia, Miguel Viveiros, and Celso Cunha. 2022. "Drug Repurposing for COVID-19: A Review and a Novel Strategy to Identify New Targets and Potential Drug Candidates" Molecules 27, no. 9: 2723. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27092723

APA Style

Rodrigues, L., Bento Cunha, R., Vassilevskaia, T., Viveiros, M., & Cunha, C. (2022). Drug Repurposing for COVID-19: A Review and a Novel Strategy to Identify New Targets and Potential Drug Candidates. Molecules, 27(9), 2723. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27092723

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

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