Network-based Drug Repurposing for Human Coronavirus

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

Toremifene is the approved first generation nonsteroidal SERMs for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer [64] . SERMs (including toremifene) inhibited Ebola virus infection [17] by interacting with and destabilizing the Ebola virus glycoprotein [36] . In vitro assays have demonstrated that toremifene inhibited growth of MERS-CoV [16, 65] and SARA-CoV [35] (Table 1) . Emodin, an anthraquinone derivative extracted from the roots of rheum tanguticum, have been reported to have various anti-virus effects. Specifically, emdoin inhibited SARS-CoV associated 3a protein [66] , and blocked an interaction between the SARS-CoV spike protein and ACE2 [67] . Altogether, network analyses and published experimental data suggested that combining toremifene and emdoin offered a potential therapeutic approach for HCoVs ( Figure 6C ). Figure 5A , targets of both mercaptopurine and melatonin showed strong network proximity with HCoV-associated host proteins in the human interactome network. Recent in vitro and in vivo studies identified mercaptopurine as a selective inhibitor of both SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV by targeting papain-like protease [50, 51] . Melatonin was reported in potential treatment of . 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.