AI Article Synopsis
- - The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to urgent efforts for effective COVID-19 treatments, with drug repurposing seen as a quicker and cheaper alternative to creating new drugs from scratch.
- - This study explored three network-based methods to find existing medications that could potentially treat COVID-19 by analyzing blood cell transcriptomic data from COVID-19 patients and other related conditions.
- - Alongside familiar medications like anticoagulants and corticosteroids, the research also highlighted unconventional drugs, including SCN5A inhibitors and central nervous system agents, but emphasized the need for clinical trials to validate their use.
Article Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a worldwide public health emergency. Despite the beginning of a vaccination campaign, the search for new drugs to appropriately treat COVID-19 patients remains a priority. Drug repurposing represents a faster and cheaper method than de novo drug discovery. In this study, we examined three different network-based approaches to identify potentially repurposable drugs to treat COVID-19. We analyzed transcriptomic data from whole blood cells of patients with COVID-19 and 21 other related conditions, as compared with those of healthy subjects. In addition to conventionally used drugs (e.g., anticoagulants, antihistaminics, anti-TNFα antibodies, corticosteroids), unconventional candidate compounds, such as SCN5A inhibitors and drugs active in the central nervous system, were identified. Clinical judgment and validation through clinical trials are always mandatory before use of the identified drugs in a clinical setting.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8316014 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2021.111954 | DOI Listing |
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