Phytopharmaceuticals mediated Furin and TMPRSS2 receptor blocking: can it be a potential therapeutic option for Covid-19?

Palit, Partha; Chattopadhyay, Debprasad; Thomas, Sabu; Kundu, Amit; Kim, Hyung Sik; Rezaei, Nima

Currently, novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak creates global panic across the continents, as people from almost all countries and territories have been affected by this highly contagious viral disease. The scenario is deteriorating due to lack of proper & specific target-oriented pharmacologically safe prophylactic agents or drugs, and or any effective vaccine. drug development is urgently required to back in the normalcy in the community and to combat this pandemic. Thus, we have proposed two novel drug targets, Furin and TMPRSS2, as Covid-19 treatment strategy. We have highlighted this target-oriented novel drug delivery strategy, based on their pathophysiological implication on SARS-CoV-2 infection, as evident from earlier SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and influenza virus infection via host cell entry, priming, fusion, and endocytosis. An earlier study suggested that Furin and TMPRSS2 knockout mice had reduced level of viral load and a lower degree of organ damage such as the lung. The present study thus highlights the promise of some selected novel and potential anti-viral Phytopharmaceutical that bind to Furin and TMPRSS2 as target. As, few of them had shown promising anti-viral response in both preclinical and clinical study with acceptable therapeutic safety-index. Hence, this strategy may limit life-threatening Covid-19 infection and its mortality rate through nano-suspension based intra-nasal or oral nebulizer spray, to treat mild to moderate SARS-COV-2 infection, when Furin and TMPRSS2 receptor may initiate to express and activate for processing the virus to cause cellular infection by replication within the host cell.