Recent Advances in Discovery of Potent Proteases Inhibitors Targeting the SARS Coronaviruses

Author(s):  
Arti Sharma ◽  
Kajal Kaliya ◽  
Sushil K. Maurya

: Across the globe, countries are being challenged by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic in ways they have never been before. Global outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 with an uncertain fatality rate has imposed extreme challenges on global health. The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic, after the disease caused by the new coronavirus spread to more than 100 countries. To date, various therapeutic approaches has been proposed and are being implemented to combat this pandemic, but unfortunately, no sovereign remedy has been es-tablished yet. Protease enzymes are important targets to develop therapies for the treatment of infections caused by SARS coronaviruses. In this review, an overview is given on recent advances in discovery of potent protease inhibitors targeting the SARS coronaviruses. Different classes of natural product inhibitors targeting protease enzymes of SARS coronaviruses have been studied in detail along with their structure activity relationship analysis. This study emphasized on important covalent and non-covalent small molecule inhibitors which effectively inhibited chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CLpro) and papain-like protease (PLpro) of two SARS coronaviruses i.e. SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. Repurposing of drugs has been also outlined in this study to understand their roles as quick-to-be-identified therapy to combat these zoonotic coronaviruses.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuefei Jin ◽  
Wangquan Ji ◽  
Haiyan Yang ◽  
Shuaiyin Chen ◽  
Weiguo Zhang ◽  
...  

AbstractOn 12 March 2020, the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. As of 4 August 2020, more than 18 million confirmed infections had been reported globally. Most patients have mild symptoms, but some patients develop respiratory failure which is the leading cause of death among COVID-19 patients. Endothelial cells with high levels of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 expression are major participants and regulators of inflammatory reactions and coagulation. Accumulating evidence suggests that endothelial activation and dysfunction participate in COVID-19 pathogenesis by altering the integrity of vessel barrier, promoting pro-coagulative state, inducing endothelial inflammation, and even mediating leukocyte infiltration. This review describes the proposed cellular and molecular mechanisms of endothelial activation and dysfunction during COVID-19 emphasizing the principal mediators and therapeutic implications.


RSC Advances ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (62) ◽  
pp. 38128-38141
Author(s):  
Sherif S. Ebada ◽  
Nariman A. Al-Jawabri ◽  
Fadia S. Youssef ◽  
Dina H. El-Kashef ◽  
Tim-Oliver Knedel ◽  
...  

On Wednesday 11th March, 2020, the world health organization (WHO) announced novel coronavirus (COVID-19, also called SARS-CoV-2) as a pandemic.


Author(s):  
Ken Hyland ◽  
Feng (Kevin) Jiang

Abstract Covid-19, the greatest global health crisis for a century, brought a new immediacy and urgency to international bio-medical research. The pandemic generated intense competition to produce a vaccine and contain the virus, creating what the World Health Organization referred to as an ‘infodemic’ of published output. In this frantic atmosphere, researchers were keen to get their research noticed. In this paper, we explore whether this enthusiasm influenced the rhetorical presentation of research and encouraged scientists to “sell” their studies. Examining a corpus of the most highly cited SCI articles on the virus published in the first seven months of 2020, we explore authors’ use of hyperbolic and promotional language to boost aspects of their research. Our results show a significant increase in hype to stress certainty, contribution, novelty and potential, especially regarding research methods, outcomes and primacy. Our study sheds light on scientific persuasion at a time of intense social anxiety.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Vilbert

The COVID-19 has renovated the debate about global health governance. A number of scholars have proposed that the World Health Organization should assume the position of a central coordinator with hierarchical powers, demanding nation-states to “share their sovereignty”. This article presents four main objections to this project. First, when international institutions receive leverage, they use to impose “one-size-fits-all” policies, which conflicts with the characteristic heterogeny across countries. Second, geopolitical questions and the distribution of power in multilateral institutions put developing countries in a position of vulnerability within a hierarchical order. Third, the risk of crowding out parallel initiatives, especially from non-state actors. Fourth, decisions about health can have a major impact on countries, which may thwart the internal democratic principle. A Pareto improvement would be possible by strengthening the WHO’s operational capacity and its ability to issue technical guidance and coordinate with countries. To test this hypothesis, this study analyses the possible influence of the WHO’s guidance in the first year of the coronavirus health crisis, from January 2020 to January 2021, in 37 countries reported in the World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2020). The OLS regression performed shows a statistically significant negative relationship between the trust in the WHO, assumed as a proxy for the level of the organization's penetration, and the number of cases of COVID-19 (per million people) in the countries of the sample. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that there is a valid case for the countries to strengthen the WHO’s mandate post-COVID-19, but they should enhance the operations of provision of reliable information and support. Nation-states, in particular the developing ones, should eschew the temptation to create a hierarchical global health structure, which may not only fail due to countries’ asymmetries but is likely to create losers in the process.


Author(s):  
Duana Fullwiley

This chapter further explores issues of patients' tenacity to shape science, through advocacy on an international level, and investigates the ways that making a disease public in Africa often entails locating it within discourses of humanitarian “crisis,” emergency, and global health prioritization. In this way, tireless patient advocates of African origin living in France created the sickle cell disease umbrella organization of the International Organization for the Fight against Sickle Cell (OILD), which succeeded in getting sickle cell anemia the attention of the World Health Organization and the United Nations in 2008. The OILD's strategy of making sickle cell visible to these multilateral institutions consisted of linking the disease to other pressing global health problems for development through means that often deployed uncertainty as “data.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Solomon ◽  
Claudia Nannini

Participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) is a multifaceted matter and should be understood as not only referring to the governance of WHO, but also to its scientific and technical work as well as its collaborative efforts towards advancing global public health more generally. The article is concerned, in particular, with the legal and political framework surrounding attendance and participation of states and various entities in the governing bodies of the Organization, at the global and regional level. It shows that participation in the governance of WHO is still today a domain reserved to the determination of its Member States. At the same time, solutions have been found and continued efforts are necessary to take into account geopolitical considerations and to ensure a meaningful and inclusive participation of all relevant actors in global health discussions.


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