Sci Rep: The new method helps to find drugs to treat COVID-19

10, 2020 // -- Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology of KTH, in collaboration with the University of Alagappa in India, recently published a list in the journal Scientific Reports listing a variety of drugs and cocktail therapies with the potential for COVID-19 treatments.
by virtually filtering the DrugBank database, the researchers found various ways to attack SARS-CoV-2, even if they mutated.
, the study identified drugs and possible mixtures of important proteins for coronavirus.
their study used a double-scoring method to identify lead compounds with coVID-19 therapeutic potential.
program appears to have successfully avoided false positives, a common problem in virtual filtering.
(Image source: www.pixabay.com) A key part of the study was to identify drugs that target or bind to a variety of proteins that are necessary for virus replication and are also involved in the initial stages of host cell infection.
authors Vaibhav Srivastava and Arul Murugan say multi-targeting provides an effective way to respond to drug resistance, which will allow the drug to respond to mutations in the virus.
virus is rapidly mutating, which means it is modifying its proteins," said Srivastava, a government ad-year-old.
if we had a drug that could target multiple proteins, even if one protein mutated, the drug would still be effective against other proteins, " he said.
" "We have the possibility to find a combination of drug therapy options, each of which can be highly affinity binding to a specific target protein.
", for example, the study proposed a cocktail therapy: baloxavir marboxil, nathamycin and RU85053, which target three viral proteins, 3CL Main protease, papaya protease-like protease and RdRp, respectively.
drug mixture has been proven to be effective in treating other virally transmitted diseases, such as HIV.
Murugan said the fact that drugs already in clinical trials had been found through screening confirmed the reliability of their methods.
he said such studies could provide insights into why certain drugs are ineffective.
, for example, point out that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective, mainly because of its poor binding affinity to viral proteins.
other drugs recommended for testing in this study are tivantinib, olaparib, zoliflodacin, golvatinib, sonidegib, regorafenib and PCO-371.
article also lists multi-target drugs, such as DB04016, pyridophenic, and talaphony, which can also be effective against rapidly mutating coronavirus.
() Source: Study identifies new potential treatments for COVID-19 Original source: Murugan, N.A., Kumar, S., Jeyakanthan, J. et al. Searching for target-specific and multi-targeting organics for Covid-19 in the Drugbank database with a double scoring approach. Scientific Reports 10, 19125 (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75762-7。