Atazanavir inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication and pro-inflammatory cytokine production

Natalia Fintelman-Rodrigues; Carolina Q. Sacramento; Carlyle Ribeiro Lima; Franklin Souza da Silva; André C. Ferreira; Mayara Mattos; Caroline S. de Freitas; Vinicius Cardoso Soares; Suelen da Silva Gomes Dias; Jairo R. Temerozo; Milene Miranda; Aline R. Matos; Fernando A. Bozza; Nicolas Carels; Carlos Roberto Alves; Marilda M. Siqueira; Patrícia T. Bozza; Thiago Moreno L. Souza

Since the results regarding the pharmacologic activity of ATV and ATV/RTV against SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero cells were promising, we next investigated . 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 It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the .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/10.1101/2020.04.04.020925 doi: bioRxiv preprint 7 whether the proposed drug therapies could inhibit virus replication in a human epithelial pulmonary cell line (A549). ATV alone showed a nearly 10-fold increase in potency for inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 replication in A549 ( Figure 6C ) compared to Vero cells ( Figure 6B ). ATV/RTV and CQ were similarly potent in inhibiting virus replication in both cell types ( Figure 6B and C). ATV/RTV, ATV and CQ EC 50 values to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in A549 cells were 0.60 ± 0.05 µM, 0.22 ± 0.02 µM and 0.89 ± 0.02 µM, respectively. In vitro results confirmed the rational that SARS-CoV-2 would be susceptible to ATV that included cells derived from the respiratory tract.