In collaboration with Prof. Quanming Zou’s team of theArmy Medical University, and Prof. Ren Lai’s team fromtheKunming Institute of Zoology, Yan Li’s research team has published their research achievements in an online article entitled “High-throughput screening and evaluation of repurposed drugs targeting the SARS-CoV-2 main protease” in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (IF: 13.493). Yan Li is a professor of theWest China Biopharm Research Institute, West China Hospital.
Based on the newly constructed virtual screening strategy and experimental research, the project has found new small molecule inhibitors targeting COVID-19's main protease from clinical old drugs.
“To date, a number of clinically approved drugs have been evaluated for potential to treat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), such as lopinavir/ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine, cobicistat, and darunavir. Some of these drugs have been proven to be effective in vitro; however, clinical trials showed that none of these compounds led to a significant improvement in symptoms or length of hospitalization. Thus, it is essential and more reliable to start from a defined target to identify candidate drugs.”
“Taken together, based on a virtual drug screening workflow followed by experimental affinity and inhibitory efficacy evaluations, we identified several drugs that not only have a definite docking conformation and binding affinity to SARS-CoV-2 Mpro but also exhibit a stronger ability to suppress its activity than previously reported drugs, such as lopinavir, darunavir, and nelfinavir. This study provides more solid evidence at the molecular level to interpret the differences and mysteries between previous cellular experiments and clinical trials for antiviral treatment of COVID-19. Our results suggest that some clinically approved drugs, such as entrectinib, may serve as promising candidates to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.”(Results)
Yan Li is the first author of this paper. Gang Guo, Ren Lai and Quanming Zou are the co corresponding authors.This work was supported by grants from the Emergency Project of West China Hospital (number HX-2019-nCoV-025).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-021-00763-5
