Network-based Drug Repurposing for Human Coronavirus

Yadi Zhou; Yuan Hou; Jiayu Shen; Yin Huang; William Martin; Feixiong Cheng

Coronaviruses (CoVs) typically affect the respiratory tract of mammals, including humans, and lead to mild to severe respiratory tract infections [1] . In the past 2 decades, two highly pathogenic human CoVs (HCoVs), including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), emerging from animal reservoirs, have led to global epidemics with high morbidity and mortality [2] . For example, 8,098 individuals were infected and 774 died in the SARS-CoV pandemic, which cost the global economy with an estimated $30 to $100 billion [3, 4] . According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of November 2019, MERS-CoV has had a total of 2,494 diagnosed cases causing 858 deaths, the majority in Saudi Arabia [2] . In December 2019, the third pathogenic HCoV, named 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), was found in Wuhan, China. As of February 02, 2020, there have been over 14,000 cases with ~300 deaths for the 2019-nCoV pandemic (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html); furthermore, human-to-human transmission has occurred among close contacts [5] . However, there are currently no effective medications against 2019-nCoV. Several national and international research . CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.