Computational Prediction of the Comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 vs. Human Interactome to Guide the Design of Therapeutics

Kevin Dick; Kyle K Biggar; James R Green

It is of critical importance that the global research community focus its efforts on the rapid understanding the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the pathogenesis of COVID-19 in order to develop anti-viral therapeutics. Fortunately, the prior decades of research into related viral families provide a wealth of data with which to guide current and future studies, such as with the elucidation of the SARS-CoV vs human inter-species interactome in 2011 using the high-throughput (though false positive-prone) yeast-two hybrid method to highlight cyclophilins as a target for pan-coronavirus inhibitors [18] . Previous knowledge of related coronaviruses within the Coronaviridae family provide training samples with which we can identify a number of new high-confidence PPIs that contribute to our understanding of the COVID-19 disease pathogenesis and which may represent targets for novel inhibitory therapeutics.