Potential Drug Strategies to Target Coronaviruses

Abstract

Introduction: As the world has witnessed three severe coronavirus outbreaks in the past two decades, including the recent pandemic COVID19, caused by SARS-CoV2, it has become of utmost importance to develop drugs and vaccines against coronaviruses. The previous two outbreaks, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) emerged in China and Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2012, respectively. COVID19 is considered the worst of all and has taken more than 4 million lives so far and crippled the socioeconomic life of human beings in the entire world. Extensive research is being carried out to find out a solution that will not only help us to fight the current situation but also prepare us to prevent further intervention by similar viruses in the future. Here, we aim to highlight potential drug target sites in coronavirus infection or life cycle in general.

Methods: We have gone through the research papers published on coronavirus, with special emphasis on SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV2, in peer-reviewed journals and tried to identify the possible sites in the coronavirus life cycle which can be used as potential drug targets.

Results: Studies showed that there are several unique enzymes and mechanisms involved in the coronavirus life cycle which can be manipulated to develop drugs against it. However, it has been always a challenge to develop drugs or vaccines against viruses as they utilize the host cell machinery and more difficult against RNA viruses because of their high mutation rate.

Conclusions: Effective control of the current (2020) pandemic necessarily depends on the development of either a vaccine or an effective therapeutic agent. In the past, many attempts were taken to develop vaccines after the outbreak of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, though no successful vaccine reached to the market as the situation came under control. In the current scenario, many laboratories have developed effective vaccines against SARS-CoV2, which have reduced both the severity of the infection and the rate of mortality considerably. However, world needs to be prepared for similar viral outbreaks in future and research must be continued to develop more effective vaccines and therapeutics against coronaviruses.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Cytokine storm; Innate and adaptive immune response; Neutralizing antibody; SARS; Severe acute respiratory syndrome; Vaccination.