Stigmasterol for COVID-19

AbstractTo attain promising pharmacotherapies, researchers have applied drug repurposing (DR) techniques to discover the candidate medicines to combat the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Although many DR approaches have been introduced for treating different diseases, only structure-based DR (SBDR) methods can be employed as the first therapeutic option against the COVID-19 pandemic because they rely on the rudimentary information about the diseases such as the sequence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 genome. Hence, to try out new treatments for the disease, the first attempts have been made based on the SBDR methods which seem to be among the proper choices for discovering the potential medications against the emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Given the importance of SBDR approaches, in the present review, well-known SBDR methods are summarized, and their merits are investigated. Then, the databases and software applications, utilized for repurposing the drugs against COVID-19, are introduced. Besides, the identified drugs are categorized based on their targets. Finally, a comparison is made between the SBDR approaches and other DR methods, and some possible future directions are proposed.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global panic because of its continual evolution and recurring spikes. This serious malignancy is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Since the outbreak, millions of people have been affected from December 2019 till now, which has led to a great surge in finding treatments. Despite trying to handle the pandemic with the repurposing of some drugs, such as chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, lopinavir, ivermectin, etc., against COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues its out-of-control spread. There is a dire need to identify a new regimen of natural products to combat the deadly viral disease. This article deals with the literature reports to date of natural products showing inhibitory activity towards SARS-CoV-2 through different approaches, such as in vivo, in vitro, and in silico studies. Natural compounds targeting the proteins of SARS-CoV-2—the main protease (Mpro), papain-like protease (PLpro), spike proteins, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), endoribonuclease, exoribonuclease, helicase, nucleocapsid, methyltransferase, adeno diphosphate (ADP) phosphatase, other nonstructural proteins, and envelope proteins—were extracted mainly from plants, and some were isolated from bacteria, algae, fungi, and a few marine organisms.