Soumya Shraddhya Paul, Amity University Noida
SARS-CoV-2 created a catastrophic impact all around the world as of now there has been a huge demand as well as an urgent need to develop effective vaccines and drugs to counteract the effects of this pandemic worldwide. As of current data i.e., July 5, 2021, around 185 million people got affected by COVID and out of which 4 million people got scummed to it.
As of now, there have been various vaccines that have been developed to counteract the virus yet a lot of people are still suffering from not being able to access affordable drugs and medicines which are as effective. There have been various undergoing research to find therapeutic drugs which will help manage the COVID symptoms.
Repurposing drugs to fight COVID
As of now there has been repurposing of drugs that were already available in the markets so that the drugs can reach the patients in less time and these drugs will be more effective due to the previous studies that have been done on them.
Currently, there has been a study done by French Researchers aimed to lower the preclinical development steps that people are often subjected to. For this, the researchers studied the existing drugs and their antiviral activity over SARS-CoV-2.
The major compounds that were used in this study were chloroquine (CQ), amodiaquine, fluphenazine, trifluoperazine, and triflupromazine. Here the researchers developed a high-content screening called Apteeus (TEELibrary®), which has a collection of 1,942 approved drugs. Through this method, one can screen for antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2.
Out of all the drugs that were used in this study only 3 showed dose-dependent antiviral effects over SARS-CoV-2 namely perphenazine, nitazoxanide, and clofoctol. Out of these three clofoctol was taken for further studies.
Clofoctol
Clofoctol is an antibacterial drug designed in the 1940s to treat Streptococcus pneumonia which was the major cause of pneumonia worldwide as well as Staphylococcus aureus. Clofoctol affects the permeability of bacterial cell walls and also inhibits cell wall synthesis, recently it has been seen to have inhibited protein translation which in turn impair tumour growth.
In this research, the scientist showed that clofoctol can block the translation of viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) in SARS-CoV-2 that can, in turn, control the spread of the virus. This happens due to activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR) pathways, as there have been previous reports on this drug that showed it can induce endoplasmic reticulum stress and activate all three UPR pathways.
The interference of these UPR pathways has been shown to have shown blocking of the replication of the viruses like SARS-CoV-2. Even though further studies are required to prove the claims.
Conclusion
Through this study, scientists were able to conclude that Clofoctol is a strong candidate for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 and the mice trials on this drug have been successful till now.
Also read: Hepatocellular carcinoma- A cellular overview
Reference:
- Belouzard, S., Machelart, A., Sencio, V., et al. (2021). Large scale screening discovers clofoctol as an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 replication that reduces COVID-19-like pathology. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.30.450483
About author:
Soumya Shraddhya Paul is an undergrad biotechnology student who worked in building 3D prosthetics in Base Hospital Delhi Cantt, and holds a key interest in nutraceuticals and enzymology.
Social Media Info: www.linkedin.com/in/soumya-shraddhya-paul-858229203
Some of her published articles at BioXone are:
- https://bioxone.in/news/worldnews/plug-in-processes-for-lignin-valorization/
- https://bioxone.in/news/worldnews/antacid-medication-to-help-control-diabetes/
- https://bioxone.in/news/worldnews/crispr-act-3-0-a-revolution-in-plant-gene-technology/
- The Corrosion Prediction from the Corrosion Product Performance
- Nitrogen Resilience in Waterlogged Soybean plants
- Cell Senescence in Type II Diabetes: Therapeutic Potential
- Transgene-Free Canker-Resistant Citrus sinensis with Cas12/RNP
- AI Literacy in Early Childhood Education: Challenges and Opportunities
One thought on “Clofoctol: A potential Antibiotic against SARS-CoV-2”