The IMPDH inhibitor merimepodib suppresses SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro

Natalya Bukreyeva; Emily K. Mantlo; Rachel A. Sattler; Cheng Huang; Slobodan Paessler; Jerry Zeldis

In COVID-19 infection it is essential to minimize the spread of the viral infection to the lower respiratory tract. We chose to test MMPD pretreated uninfected cells in order to see if viral spread can be limited. This approach potentially allows us to model the use of this drug for prophylaxis. This is important since a large proportion of exposed patients can experience rapid expansion of their viral burden while being asymptomatic. A drug that thwarts this viral . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.07.028589 doi: bioRxiv preprint expansion will allow the immune system to eliminate the nascent infection. Since MMPD is a host directed therapy and not a direct acting antiviral, the likelihood of emergence of resistant variants of the virus to MMPD is low. Potentially MMPD might be used in combination with direct antivirals or immunomodulators.