Repositioning of Drugs as a Promising Strategy to Fight COVID-19 (original) (raw)
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A Review on Drug Repurposing: A Strategy to Treat Human Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)
International Journal of TROPICAL DISEASE & Health
Novel coronavirus pandemic has created a massive public health emergency causing around 1.85 million deaths world-wide till 5th January, 2021. New SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus strain known as SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent which infected more than 84 million people across the globe. Current epicentre of the pandemic has shifted to Europe and United States and Indian subcontinent from its place of origin-Wuhan City, Hubei province in China. Due to limited availability of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 or its related β-coronavirus (SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV), mass immunization is currently not possible. Thus, use of curative therapies could be the only choice of intervention. Therefore, rapid treatment of millions of COVID-19 patients in limited time can only be achieved by repurposing pre-approved and existing drugs. Network-based high-throughput computational approach has also predicted several repurposable drugs. Cheaper, less toxic and well tolerated drugs such ...
Can drug repurposing strategies be the solution to the COVID-19 crisis?
Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in disastrous human and economic costs, mainly due to the initial lack of specific treatments. Complementary to immunotherapies, drug repurposing is possibly the best option to arrive at COVID-19 treatments in the short term. Areas covered: Repurposing prospects undergoing clinical trials or with some level of evidence emerging from clinical studies are overviewed. The authors discuss some possible intellectual property and commercial barriers to drug repurposing, and strategies to facilitate equitable access to incoming therapeutic solutions, highlighting the importance of collaborative drug discovery models. Based on a critical analysis of the available literature about in silico screens against SARS-CoV-2 main protease, the authors illustrate how frequently overconfident conclusions are being drawn in COVID-19-related literature. Expert opinion: Most of the current clinical trials on potential COVID-19 treatments are, in fact, drug repurposing examples. In October 2020, the FDA approved a repurposed antiviral, remdesivir, as the first treatment for COVID-19. Considering the high expectations invested in approaching therapeutic solutions, the scientific community must be careful not to raise unrealistic expectations. Today more than ever, the conclusions drawn in scientific reports have to be fully supported by the level of evidence, avoiding any sort of unfounded speculation.
Progress, pitfalls, and path forward of drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment
Therapeutic Advances in Respiratory Disease, 2022
On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic a public health emergency of international concern. The viral outbreak led in turn to an exponential growth of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, that is, a multiorgan disease that has led to more than 6.3 million deaths worldwide, as of June 2022. There are currently few effective drugs approved for treatment of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 patients. Many of the compounds tested so far have been selected through a drug repurposing approach, that is, by identifying novel indications for drugs already approved for other conditions. We here present an up-to-date review of the main Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved drugs repurposed against SARS-CoV-2 infection, discussing their mechanism of action and their most important preclinical and clinical results. Reviewed compounds were chosen to privilege those that have been approved for us...
Clinical features and mechanistic insights into drug repurposing for combating COVID-19
The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology, 2021
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged from Wuhan in China before it spread to the entire globe. It causes coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) where mostly individuals present mild symptoms, some remain asymptomatic and some show severe lung inflammation and pneumonia in the host through the induction of a marked inflammatory 'cytokine storm'. New and efficacious vaccines have been developed and put into clinical practice in record time, however, there is a still a need for effective treatments for those who are not vaccinated or remain susceptible to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variant strains. Despite this, effective therapeutic interventions against COVID-19 remain elusive. Here, we have reviewed potential drugs for COVID-19 classified on the basis of their mode of action. The mechanisms of action of each are discussed in detail to highlight the therapeutic targets that may help in reducing the global pandemic. The review was done up to July 2021 and the data was assessed through the official websites of WHO and CDC for collecting the information on the clinical trials. Moreover, the recent research papers were also assessed for the relevant data. The search was mainly based on keywords like Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, drugs (specific name of the drugs), COVID-19, clinical efficiency, safety profile, side-effects etc.This review outlines potential areas for future research into COVID-19 treatment strategies.
Repurposing of Drugs for COVID-19: THE WAY FORWARD
Drug repurposing/ repositioning is an unconventional drug discovery approach to explore new therapeutic benefits of existing drugs and many abandoned compounds. It helps to accelerate the drug discovery process through the identification of a novel clinical use for an existing drug. The repositioning or "repurposing" of existing therapies for alternative disease indications is an attractive approach that can save significant investments of time and money during drug development. With the rise in COVID-19 cases globally, the scientific community made enormous efforts in order to rapidly develop vaccines that prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection. Due to the urgent need for development of drugs, repurposing of drugs was one of the most important strategies for COVID-19.
Repurposed drugs and their progression against COVID-19
The Pharma Innovation, 2021
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease), which was initially noticed in the seafood market at Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Since then this deadly virus has outspread like wildfire across the globe and has put all the healthcare services at red alert. The outburst of COVID-19 has already taken the shape of the pandemic, affecting more than 200 countries in just a few months. A global response to prepare our health systems is very much imperative and the whole world is desperate to find ways to tackle this pandemic by developing effective treatments. Unfortunately, no reliable therapeutic interventions are available currently for critically affected ill COVID-19 patients. Treatment of COVID-19 patients is mainly based on symptomatic management. Emerging clinical trials and research data representing the structural and functional aspects of SARS-CoV-2 suggests testing of the repurposed drugs ranging from flu treatments to failed ebola drugs, to anti-malarial drugs that were first developed decades ago. The review focuses on the various already adopted and ongoing trials to date for developing effective therapeutic strategies to combat this viral outbreak. We hope that the accumulated information about various repositioning trials will help the international research community to lead potential clinical practices and to find solutions for COVID-19 treatment in this need of the hour.
ROLE OF DRUG REPURPOSING IN CURRENT TREATMENT STRATEGIES AGAINST COVID-19; SYSTEMIC REVIEW
07/2020, 2020
COVID-19 has now been affirmedpandemic and novel therapies are immediatelydesirable as we arrive astageoutside containment. Because COVID-19 is now becoming pandemic and in the nonappearance of known authenticated efficient therapy, efforts of laboratories and medical teams have focused on repurposing FDA sanctioned drugs to treat the most severe cases of infection. Developing novel drugs from is a long-lasting process, consequentlyunfeasible to face the instantaneousworldwide challenge.Drug repurposing (also termed drug profiling re-tasking) is an approach for recognizing new usages for official or new drugs that are separate the opportunity of the unique medical indication. Drug repurposing is a developing approach where prevailing medicines, having previously been tested safe in humans, are reorganized to combat difficult-to-treat diseases. Although using like repurposed drugs separately may eventually not yield an important clinical benefit, carefully combined combinations could be very operative, the current question now being which combination. In this present review we are trying to shedding light on the numerous previously well reported and recognized drug which can be mostly used as repurposed medicament in the management of COVID-19 pandemic.
Repurposed Drugs and Covid-19 Pandemic-What and Why?
The Journal of Phytopharmacology, 2021
New remedies for COVID-19 are the demand of time as we live in a phase beyond containment in this current pandemic. Its impractical to think of a quick relief immediately as drug development from a scratch is not an easy and quick process. Repurposing of drugs might be a method where drugs already tested safe to humans will be redeployed to curb a disease. Use of repurposed drugs alone may not be able to produce a clear and advantageous clinical result where a carefully combined cocktails could be a good alternative, as seen in treatment of HIV in the 1990s. But the most important question now is now, which combination? This article gives a detailed review on repurposed drugs under clinical trial for COVID-19 to find out a suitable cocktail.
Journal of Clinical Medicine Research
Despite high morbidity and mortality of ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, no specific therapy has been established till date. Though in vitro studies identified various molecules as possible therapies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), these findings call for substantiation by human studies. We conducted this review aiming at reporting evidences on therapies used so far globally for management of COVID-19 in clinical settings. We searched electronic databases as PubMed, Google Scholar, EMBASE and extracted 612 possible studies as on May 31, 2020. We included original studies of any epidemiological design done on human COVID-19 patients and measured clinical outcomes. Finally, following removal of duplicates and studies meeting exclusion criteria, we derived 22 studies, of which eight were clinical trials, seven were case reports and case series, and seven were observational studies. The most reported therapies were hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) (eight studies) and lopinavir/ritonavir (four studies). We conclude from the evidence generated so far that interferon combined with antivirals, remdesivir, umifenovir and favipiravir were mostly associated with better clinical outcomes. The therapeutic effect of HCQ was established initially by two clinical trials; one of them showing a reinforcing effect by azithromycin but subsequent studies did not elicit any effectiveness rather increased rate of adverse events was reported. Lopinavir/ritonavir was found beneficial when administered with interferon and ribavirin, but one clinical trial on its sole use proved contrary. As many clinical trials are in process, we expect to get concrete evidences on repurposing of existing drugs based on less biased, high powered studies.
Clinical trials on drug repositioning for COVID-19 treatment
PAHO Journal, 2020
The World Health Organization (WHO) was informed on December 2019 about a coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province (China). Subsequently, on March 12, 2020, 125,048 cases and 4,614 deaths were reported. Coronavirus is an enveloped RNA virus, from the genus Betacoronavirus, that is distributed in birds, humans, and other mammals. WHO has named the novel coronavirus disease as COVID-19. More than 80 clinical trials have been launched to test coronavirus treatment, including some drug repurposing or repositioning for COVID-19. Hence, we performed a search in March 2020 of the clinicaltrials.gov database. The eligibility criteria for the retrieved studies were: contain a clinicaltrials.gov base identifier number; describe the number of participants and the period for the study; describe the participants' clinical conditions; and utilize interventions with medicines already studied or approved for any other disease in patients infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (2019-nCoV). It is essential to emphasize that this article only captured trials listed in the clinicaltrials.gov database. We identified 24 clinical trials, involving more than 20 medicines, such as human immunoglobulin, interferons, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, arbidol, remdesivir, favipiravir, lopinavir, ritonavir, oseltamivir, methylprednisolone, bevacizumab, and traditional Chinese medicines (TCM). Although drug repurposing has some limitations, repositioning clinical trials may represent an attractive strategy because they facilitate the discovery of new classes of medicines; they have lower costs and take less time to reach the market; and there are existing pharmaceutical supply chains for formulation and distribution.