A painful lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic: the need for broad-spectrum, host-directed antivirals

A painful lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic: the need for broad-spectrum, host-directed antivirals

Blog Article

Abstract While the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred intense research and collaborative discovery worldwide, the development of a safe, effective, apac1/60/1/cw and targeted antiviral from the ground up is time intensive.Therefore, most antiviral discovery efforts are focused on the re-purposing of clinical stage or approved drugs.While emerging data on drugs undergoing COVID-19 repurpose are intriguing, there is an undeniable need to develop broad-spectrum antivirals to prevent future viral pandemics of unknown origin.

The ideal drug to curtail rapid viral spread would be a broad-acting agent with activity against a wide range of viruses.Such a drug would work by modulating host-proteins that are often shared jerome brown jersey by multiple virus families thereby enabling preemptive drug development and therefore rapid deployment at the onset of an outbreak.Targeting host-pathways and cellular proteins that are hijacked by viruses can potentially offer broad-spectrum targets for the development of future antiviral drugs.

Such host-directed antivirals are also likely to offer a higher barrier to the development and selection of drug resistant mutations.Given that most approved antivirals do not target host-proteins, we reinforce the need for the development of such antivirals that can be used in pre- and post-exposure populations.