Drug repurposing strategies for COVID-19
Suranga L Senanayake
Abstract
COVID-19 has now been declared a pandemic and new treatments are urgently needed as we enter a phase beyond containment. Developing new drugs from scratch is a lengthy process, thus impractical to face the immediate global challenge. Drug repurposing is an emerging strategy where existing medicines, having already been tested safe in humans, are redeployed to combat difficult-to-treat diseases. While using such repurposed drugs individually may ultimately not yield a significant clinical benefit, carefully combined cocktails could be very effective, as was for HIV in the 1990s; the urgent question now being which combination.
Topics & Concepts
RepurposingCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Drug repositioningPandemic2019-20 coronavirus outbreakSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)DrugMedicineIntensive care medicineRisk analysis (engineering)PharmacologyVirologyEngineeringOutbreakInfectious disease (medical specialty)DiseasePathologyWaste managementSARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 ResearchCOVID-19 Clinical Research StudiesSARS-CoV-2 detection and testing