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Drug Development Strategies and Immunological Aspects of SARS-CoV-2



Swastika Maitra1, Nobendu Mukerjee2, 3, Abhijit Dey3, Arabinda Ghosh4, Athanasios Alexiou5, 6, *
1 Department of Microbiology, Adamas University, Kolkata, India
2 Department of Microbiology, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, West Bengal 700118, Kolkata, India
3 Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, Kolkata, West Bengal 700073, India
4 Microbiology Division, Department of Botany, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam-781014, India
5 Department of Science and Engineering, Novel Global Community Educational Foundation, Hebersham, NSW 2770, Australia
6 AFNP Med Austria, Wien 1030, Austria


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Creative Commons License
© 2022 Maitra et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Science and Engineering, Novel Global Community Educational Foundation, Hebersham, NSW 2770, Australia; alextha@yahoo.gr


Abstract

Following the 1918 influenza virus attack, which resulted in a worldwide pandemic, the world is again facing a similar situation as of March 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The discovery of a novel infectious agent from the Coronaviridae family was made possible by advancements in Medical Science and achievements in pharmaceutical research. SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the coronavirus family, a large and diverse group of viruses with a wide range of characteristics. This single-stranded RNA virus that infects humans and other animals has a single linear RNA segment and infects them in a positive-sense manner. The common cold is not the only sickness that coronaviruses may cause. They can also cause more dangerous infections like the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), with a 34 percent mortality rate. Rapid sequencing by several organizations aided in identifying the virus's structure and function, determining the virus's immunogenicity in various populations, and developing effective prophylactic medicines for the virus. As of December 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that more than 150 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 were developing. Because of this, a total of 52 potential vaccination candidates are now being investigated in different phases. According to the WHO, nine vaccines have been approved and have extensive use from at least one regulatory authority, and five more are under evaluation.

Keywords: Immune response, Drug repurposing, SARS-CoV-2, Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, Levamisole, Niclosamide, Sitagliptin, Favipiravir.