A chemotherapy drug originally developed to treat cancer could be reversed to prevent the reproduction of the novel coronavirus and Covid-19 treatment, according to a study based on computer simulations and work-based tests. blade. The research, published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, combined several computational methods that resemble drug virus interactions from different, hairy perspectives. Using this hybrid method, scientists from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology in China scrapped 1,906 existing drugs for their ability to inhibit the reproduction of the coronavirus by targeting on a viral protein called RNA polymerase RNA-dependent RNA (RdRP).
The researchers identified four promising drugs, which were then tested against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in laboratory tests. They reported that two of the drugs, pralatrexate and azithromycin, successfully inhibited the reproduction of the virus, and further laboratory tests showed that pralatrexate more significantly inhibited viral reproduction than did remdesivir – a drug currently used to treat some Covid-19 patients.
According to the scientists, the findings suggest that pralatrexate may be reintroduced for Covid-19 treatment. However, the researchers said the chemotherapy drug could induce major side effects and is used for people with terminal lymphoma, so they added that immediate use is not guaranteed for Covid-19 patients. . But the research showed the importance of the new screening strategy to identify drugs that could be re-injected.
“We have demonstrated the value of our novel hybrid approach that combines deep learning technologies with more traditional simulations of molecular dynamics,” said study author Haiping Zhang of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology.
The researchers are now developing additional computational methods to generate new molecular structures that could be upgraded to new drugs to treat Covid-19.
(This story was published from a wire group group without altering the text.)
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