Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found that many hepatitis C drugs can act against the main protease of SARS-CoV-2. Currently, no drugs target the SARS-CoV-2 main protease. It is considered an extremely promising drug target since it is very different in structure from human proteases. Moreover, designing a new drug from scratch takes a long time and the track for FDA approval can take an average of 10 years.
Inhibiting the protease halts the reproduction of SARS-CoV-2. This works by cutting the polyproteins that SArS-CoV-2 expresses, thereby making them functional.
The research was published just this week. Here, the researchers found that hepatitis C protease inhibitors, specifically telaprevir, narlaprevir, and boceprevir, were good at inhibiting the production of SARS-CoV-2. To do this, the team created room temperature X-ray measurements. They then built a 3D chemical structure map to view chemical bounds between the protease and drug inhibitor. They also proved the inhibitor’s enzyme kinetics, and found a high binding affinity of the inhibitor, indicating efficient inhibition of the protease.
This study demonstrates the repurposing on a molecular level. However, more research would need to be done in a systemic mammal model, showing infection of SARS-CoV-2 and rescue of COVID-19 phenotypes via the proposed drugs.
- Fan
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969212620303798
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7331567/#:~:text=The%20SARS%2DCoV%2D2%20main%20protease%20is%20considered%20a%20promising,based%20on%20previous%20lead%20compounds.
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