Flunarizine as a Candidate for Drug Repurposing Against Human Pathogenic Mammarenaviruses.

Lassa fever (LF), a viral hemorrhagic fever disease with a case fatality rate that can be over 20% among hospitalized LF patients, is endemic to many West African countries. Currently, no vaccines or therapies are specifically licensed to prevent or treat LF, hence the significance of developing therapeutics against the mammarenavirus Lassa virus (LASV), the causative agent of LF. We used in silico docking approaches to investigate the binding affinities of 2015 existing drugs to LASV proteins known to play critical roles in the formation and activity of the virus ribonucleoprotein complex (vRNP) responsible for directing replication and transcription of the viral genome.

Chemoinformatic Design and Profiling of Derivatives of Dasabuvir, Efavirenz, and Tipranavir as Potential Inhibitors of Zika Virus RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase and Methyltransferase.

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection is one of the mosquito-borne flaviviruses of human importance with more than 2 million suspected cases and more than 1 million people infected in about 30 countries. There are reported inhibitors of the zika virus replication machinery, but no approved effective antiviral therapy including vaccines directed against the virus for treatment or prevention is currently available. The study investigated the chemoinformatic design and profiling of derivatives of dasabuvir, efavirenz, and tipranavir as potential inhibitors of the zika virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) and/or methyltransferase (MTase).