BACKGROUND
COVID-19 pandemic prompts the study of coronavirus biology and search of putative therapeutic strategies.
OBJECTIVE
To compare SARS-CoV-2 genome-wide structure and proteins with other coronaviruses, focusing on putative coronavirus-specific or SARS-CoV-2 specific therapeutic designs.
METHODS
The genome-wide structure of SARS-CoV-2 was compared to that of SARS and other coronaviruses in order to gain insights, doing a literature review through Google searches.
RESULTS
There are promising therapeutic alternatives. Host cell targets could be modulated to hamper viral replication, but targeting viral proteins directly would be a better therapeutic design, since fewer adverse side effects would be expected.
CONCLUSIONS
Therapeutic strategies (Figure 1) could include the modulation of host targets (PARPs, kinases) , competition with G-quadruplexes or nucleoside analogs to hamper RDRP. The nicest anti-CoV options include inhibitors of the conserved essential viral proteases and drugs that interfere ribosome slippage at the -1 PRF site.
Intracellular sensing of viral genomes and viral evasion
