Coronavirus, which is also known as COVID-19. This infectious disease, mainly caused by the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). It was initially identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has since spread globally, resulting in an ongoing pandemic. Till 10'th May 2020, approximately 4.09 million cases have been reported at the global level. Although more than 282,000 deaths have been reported so far. And about 1.4 million infected people have been recovered from this chronic virus.
Apart from this multiple companies have already started working on vaccine production, including a collaboration between the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) which is basically a branch of NIH and mRNA company Moderna.
But, the vaccine development is far away and seems too slow in order to catch up the ongoing as well as growing outbreak.
There are some other companies, which are considering a different angle for the testing of antiviral drugs that are already available.
Gilead Sciences stated it will partner with China on a randomized, controlled trial designed to assess its antiviral drug candidate remdesivir as a potential treatment for 2019-nCoV. Another instance was, 41 patients were considered in Wuhan for the use of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) antivirals lopinavir and ritonavir.
Through a statement by Keunsoo Kang, PhD, assistant professor at Dankook University and senior author on the paper, "drug repurposing” approach, to use existing antivirals on another virus.
Kang also stated that only such ARV drugs (antiretroviral) that are existing in the market were presented from the raw outcomes.”
The team used their pre-trained deep learning-based drug-target interaction model, MT-DTI in order to detect as well as identify commercially existing drugs which has the potential to act on the viral proteins of 2019-nCoV. Molecule Transformer-Drug Target Interaction (MT-DTI) is a kind of self-attention-based deep learning model. The purpose of designing the model was predicting an affinity score between a drug and a protein.
On the basis of some outcomes, Atazanavir Ritonavir, an antiretroviral medication recommended for the use to treat as well as prevent the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is the most promising chemical compound.
The examined model showed that atazanavir has an inhibitory potency with Kd of 94.94 nM against the 2019-nCoV 3C-like proteinase, followed by efavirenz (199.17 nM), ritonavir (204.05 nM), and dolutegravir (336.91 nM). Atazanavir Ritonavir was predicted to have a potential binding affinity in order to several components of the virus, binding to helicase (Kd 25.92 nM), 3′-to-5′ exonuclease (Kd 82.36 nM), 2′-O-ribose methyltransferase (Kd of 390 nM), RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (Kd 21.83 nM), and endoRNAse (Kd 50.32 nM), specifying that the all subunits of the COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) replication complex can be inhibited simultaneously through the atazanavir.”
Atazanavir previously approved as a treatment for HIV/AIDS:
Atazanavir/Ritonavir combined together as an antiviral medicine for prevention of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from multiplying in your body.
Atazanavir should be used with the other medications for treating the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), a kind of virus that may cause AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Atazanavir should be considered as a cure for HIV or AIDS.
Combination Atazanavir and ritonavir tablets may be used instead of lopinavir /ritonavir.
Side effects of atazanavir and ritonavir tablets are generally minimal.
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