SARS‐CoV‐2 virus infection: Targets and antiviral pharmacological strategies

Campos, Daniel Melo de Oliveira; Fulco, Umberto Laino; de Oliveira, Claudio Bruno Silva; Oliveira, Jonas Ivan Nobre

The current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19), transmitted person‐to‐person by severe acute respiratory syndrome of coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2), poses a threat to global public health. To present, these are still no clinically approved antibodies or drugs specific for SARS‐CoV‐2, which makes it difficult for controlling the associated pandemic, limited to monitoring and containment. This situation generates a new need for the development of safe and effective treatments. Since SARS‐CoV‐2 shares phylogenetic traits with SARS‐CoV and MERS‐CoV, antiviral medicines may provide some insight into the development of COVID‐19 therapeutics. Besides that, they are being prioritized several FDA‐approved drugs due to the pandemic state. Despite recent advances in the control of the current COVID‐19 pandemic, challenges such as the rapid virus spread and the socioeconomic cost of this outbreak remain for the inexistence of therapeutics agents against SARS‐CoV‐2. From this moment, the in vivo evaluation of FDA‐approved drugs, which until then appears to be effective are recommended, such as chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, favipiravir, nitazoxanide, and ivermectin; besides new targets: Mpro, spike glycoprotein, and TMPRSS2 inhibitors. Therefore, these investigations are needed to prove the efficacy and safety of these potential candidates, including their side effects.