Identification of Common Biological Pathways and Drug Targets Across Multiple Respiratory Viruses Based on Human Host Gene Expression Analysis

Smith, Steven B.; Dampier, William; Tozeren, Aydin; Brown, James R.; Magid-Slav, Michal

Our analysis suggests several potential repurposing opportunities for launched drugs against host-viral targets (Table 4 ). This assumption is based on the occurrence of genes that are differentially expressed in infection models for at least five of the seven respiratory viruses, have involvement in a number of relevant pathways related to host immune response, and encode for known drug targets. The drugs associated with this gene list do not have current indications as anti-viral therapies, although Pranlukast and Clenbuterol are prescribed for relief of lung disorders such as bronchospasm after allergic reactions and asthma bronchoconstriction during asthma attacks, respectively. Also, Minocycline, sometimes called Minocin, is a broad-spectrum tetracycline antibiotic as well as a caspase 1 (CASP1) inhibitor while Chloroquine is a well-known anti-malaria drug [29] [30] [31] . In fact, eight of the ten drug repurposing gene targets are involved in activation of the innate immune response, while the remaining two have some evidence of virus modulation. Potential drug repurposing opportunities for F3, IL1B, TNF, and MMP9, as well as the Parkin-UPS pathway gene product CASP1, are discussed below.