Department of Microbiology, St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, India.
Department of Molecular Medicine, Bose Institute, Kolkata, India.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2021;1352:111-124. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-85109-5_7.
As the world has witnessed three severe coronavirus outbreaks in the past two decades, including the recent pandemic COVID19, caused by SARS-CoV2, it has become of utmost importance to develop drugs and vaccines against coronaviruses. The previous two outbreaks, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) emerged in China and Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2012, respectively. COVID19 is considered the worst of all and has taken more than 4 million lives so far and crippled the socioeconomic life of human beings in the entire world. Extensive research is being carried out to find out a solution that will not only help us to fight the current situation but also prepare us to prevent further intervention by similar viruses in the future. Here, we aim to highlight potential drug target sites in coronavirus infection or life cycle in general.
We have gone through the research papers published on coronavirus, with special emphasis on SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV2, in peer-reviewed journals and tried to identify the possible sites in the coronavirus life cycle which can be used as potential drug targets.
Studies showed that there are several unique enzymes and mechanisms involved in the coronavirus life cycle which can be manipulated to develop drugs against it. However, it has been always a challenge to develop drugs or vaccines against viruses as they utilize the host cell machinery and more difficult against RNA viruses because of their high mutation rate.
Effective control of the current (2020) pandemic necessarily depends on the development of either a vaccine or an effective therapeutic agent. In the past, many attempts were taken to develop vaccines after the outbreak of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, though no successful vaccine reached to the market as the situation came under control. In the current scenario, many laboratories have developed effective vaccines against SARS-CoV2, which have reduced both the severity of the infection and the rate of mortality considerably. However, world needs to be prepared for similar viral outbreaks in future and research must be continued to develop more effective vaccines and therapeutics against coronaviruses.
在过去的二十年中，世界已经见证了三次严重的冠状病毒爆发，包括最近由 SARS-CoV2 引起的 COVID19 大流行，因此开发针对冠状病毒的药物和疫苗变得至关重要。前两次爆发，即 2003 年在中国和 2012 年在沙特阿拉伯爆发的严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS）和中东呼吸综合征（MERS）。COVID19 被认为是最严重的一次，迄今为止已夺走了超过 400 万人的生命，并使全世界人类的社会经济生活陷入瘫痪。目前正在进行广泛的研究，以找到一种不仅有助于我们应对当前局势，而且还能使我们为未来类似病毒的进一步干预做好准备的解决方案。在这里，我们旨在强调冠状病毒感染或一般生命周期中的潜在药物靶标。
我们查阅了发表在同行评审期刊上的有关冠状病毒的研究论文，特别强调了 SARS-CoV、MERS-CoV 和 SARS-CoV2，并试图确定冠状病毒生命周期中可作为潜在药物靶标的可能部位。
研究表明，冠状病毒生命周期中涉及到几种独特的酶和机制，可以通过操纵这些酶和机制来开发针对冠状病毒的药物。然而，开发针对病毒的药物或疫苗一直是一个挑战，因为它们利用宿主细胞机制，而针对 RNA 病毒则更具挑战性，因为它们的突变率很高。
有效控制当前（2020 年）大流行，必须依赖于疫苗或有效治疗剂的开发。过去，在 SARS-CoV 和 MERS-CoV 爆发后，曾多次尝试开发疫苗，但由于情况得到控制，没有一种成功的疫苗投放市场。在当前情况下，许多实验室已经开发出针对 SARS-CoV2 的有效疫苗，这大大降低了感染的严重程度和死亡率。然而，世界需要为未来类似的病毒爆发做好准备，必须继续研究以开发更有效的针对冠状病毒的疫苗和疗法。
