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Review
. 2020 Dec 21;21(24):9775.
doi: 10.3390/ijms21249775.

The Current Status of Drug Repositioning and Vaccine Developments for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Jung-Hyun Won  1   2 , Howard Lee  1   2   3   4   5
Affiliations
Review

The Current Status of Drug Repositioning and Vaccine Developments for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Jung-Hyun Won et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified, the world has vehemently worked to develop treatments and vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) at an unprecedented speed. Few of the repositioned drugs for COVID-19 have shown that they were efficacious and safe. In contrast, a couple of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 will be ready for mass rollout early next year. Despite successful vaccine development for COVID-19, the world will face a whole new set of challenges including scale-up manufacturing, cold-chain logistics, long-term safety, and low vaccine acceptance. We highlighted the importance of knowledge sharing and collaboration to find innovative answers to these challenges and to prepare for newly emerging viruses.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; drug repositioning; public health crisis; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

All of the authors declare no competing interest for this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Structure of human coronavirus: the spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N) proteins. Created with BioRender (https://biorender.com/) [13].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Viral entry mechanism of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). SARS-CoV-2 first binds to ACE2 expressed in nasal epithelial cells or the respiratory tract and then penetrates into the target cell. Created with BioRender (https://biorender.com/) [16].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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