Pharmaceutical Sciences
Volume:26 Issue: 1, Nov 2020

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic that was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The disease is caused by virus SARS-CoV2. SARS-CoV2 has emerged from the highly pathogenic coronavirus in humans after Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in the twenty-first century. Special efforts and attention to protect or reduce the transmission need to be applied in susceptible populations comprising elderly people, children, and health care providers. Different countries have implemented extensive measures to reduce person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 to regulate the current outbreak. In our review article, we provided a brief introduction to SARS-CoV2 and mentioned current knowledge on molecular immune pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19. Our work will help in offering novel insight and potential therapeutic targets for combating the SARS-CoV2 infection. Based on the research articles, we systemically discussed the characteristics of COVID-19 and provided some future aspects in the field of research.

A recent outbreak of Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 disease also called COVID-19 in China, has rapidly spread to other countries of the world. The medical and scientific communities are working tirelessly to produce a vaccine due to the lethal nature of this virus. COVID-19 is a novel virus that requires immediate emergency therapy, thereby leading to massive fear of infection, social problems in the community, and an increase in the number of infected people. Therefore, scientists and researchers need to determine the epidemiological cases of the virus, such as its mode of transmission, effective preventive measures, and the nature of the life cycle. In addition, there needs to be current literature advances in diagnostic development such as RT-PCR, CT- Scan, Elisa as well as clinical researches on modern and herbal drugs for the treatment of infected patients. This treatment technique is classified from antiviral drugs such as entry, replication, nucleosides, nucleotides, and protease inhibitors, along with the use of heterocyclic drugs, monoclonal antibodies therapy, vaccine development and herbal formulations that have been pre-clinically tested in vitro and molecular docking. Chemical drug molecules with prospective applications in the treatment of COVID-19 have been included in this review.

The emergence of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has shifted the concerns of public health officials worldwide. Several previous studies have reported clinical features, methods of diagnosis and therapy approaches to combat the disease. Unfortunately, another problem arose in recognizing and distinguishing asymptomatic and presymptomatic patients who have a high risk of spreading the virus, which led health authorities to develop innovative strategies in mitigating the transmission of COVID-19. Known fever, cough, and myalgia with fatigue headache, hemoptysis, diarrhea and sometimes vomiting are the clinical features for patients confirmed with COVID-19. To confirm suspected patients, computerized tomography scan is the recommended modality since it has higher sensitivity. Several traditional approaches including antiviral, convalescent plasma therapy and monoclonal antibodies have been applied to combat the virus. Additionally, the application of several policies such as social distancing, recommendations for wearing masks and telemedicine were adopted to break the chain of the pandemic. There is much to learn from the many rapid advances in knowledge about this disease and we encourage everyone to always abide by health protocols recommended by healthcare providers so that this pandemic can end soon.

The present year saw the emergence of a pandemic Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (COVID 19). The unpreparedness for the pandemic and lack of drugs/vaccine against this virus has led to a high mortality rate across the world. In the process, a number of drugs have been tried against the corona virus including antivirals like remdesivir, lopinavir-ritonavir, and favipiravir, monoclonal antibodies like tocilizumab and sarilumab and antimalarial drugs like chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. At the present time, none of these drugs have reported efficacy against the virus. Here we present a review of all these drugs, their proposed mechanism of action against the corona virus and their status in clinical trials.

Considering the recent controversies regarding the use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, and due to the limited published data in this field, we reviewed currently available evidence for the use of NSAIDs in viral respiratory tract infections to help make decisions in this area. Currently, there is insufficient evidence to judge the safety and efficacy of NSAIDs in patients with COVID-19. According to the current evidence, acetaminophen is the choice treatment for symptomatic relief. If the patients’ symptoms are not controlled by acetaminophen, naproxen may be used as an alternative therapy.

SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causes Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). It is a respiratory tract infection and currently becoming pandemic worldwideaffecting more than 50 lakh people. As of now, there is no treatment or vaccine developed for disease management. The main protease, Mpro in SARS-CoV-2 is a druggable target explored by many scientists. We targeted this with the well-known approach of drug repurposing by using computational tools.

Schrödinger software was used for the study. Ligands were prepared from US-FDA drug-bank by importing it to Maestro graphical user interphase, optimised using LigPrep, and molecular geometry minimized using OPLS3e force-field. Mpro crystal structure 6LU7 was downloaded from PDB and optimised. Molecules were docked using CovDock module in Glide docking. Further, molecular dynamics simulations were carried out for 100 ns using Desmond module.

In docking and molecular interactions studies, penicillins emerged as hits with consistent binding pattern by forming hydrophilic, hydrophobic, electrostatic interactions. The molecular dynamics simulations confirmed the interactions. Phenoxymethylpenicillin and Carbenicillin were found to interact consistently and appeared to be the most promising.

Usually, antibiotics are discouraged from using in the viral pandemic because of the development of resistance. Azithromycin was combined with hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. Penicillins are less potent and first-line antibiotics for most of the bacterial infections. This study suggests Phenoxymethylpenicillin and Carbenicillin can be tried along with hydroxychloroquine. Further, this study shows the possible exploration by drug repurposing using computer-aided docking tools and the potential roles of beta-lactams in COVID-19.

COVID-19, a global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, has led researchers around the world to search for therapeutic agents for treatment of the disease. The main protease (MPro) of SARS-CoV-2 is one of the potential targets in the development of new drug compounds for the disease. Some known drugs such as chloroquine and remdesivir have been repurposed for treatment of COVID-19, although the the mechanism of action of these compounds is still unknown. In addition to these known drugs, new drug compounds such as 5-O-benzoylpinostrobin derivatives are also potentially used as SARS-CoV-2 MPro inhibitors. This study aims to determine the potential of 5-O-benzoylpinostrobin derivatives as SARSCoV-2 MPro inhibitors, compared with several other compounds used in COVID-19 therapy.

In silico study was carried out by molecular docking of 5-O-benzoylpinostrobin derivatives using Autodock Vina on two SARS-CoV-2 MPro receptors with PDB IDs of 5R84 and 6LU7. The free energy of binding was calculated and the the interactions of each ligand were analyzed and compared with reference ligand.

Three 5-O-benzoylpinostrobin derivatives each with fluoro, tertiary butyl, and trifluoromethyl substituents at 4-position of benzoyl group showed the lowest free energy of binding value and the highest similarity of ligand-receptor interactions with co-crystalized ligands. These three compounds even exhibited promising results in comparison with other reference ligands such as remdesivir and indinavir.

The results of this investigation anticipate that some 5-O-benzoylpinostrobin derivatives have the potential as SARS-CoV-2 MPro inhibitors.