A chemotherapy medication, originally developed to treat lymphoma, could potentially be repurposed to treat Covid-19, according to a study conducted by Haiping Zhang from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China.
The study employed the use of a novel computational drug screening strategy combined with lab experiments to arrive at this conclusion.
The findings of the study, published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, stated that computational methods can help identify such drugs by simulating how different drugs would interact with Covid-19.
Also read:
This comes as researchers and scientists across the world are trying to repurpose existing drugs to treat the coronavirus infection.
To aid the virtual screening of existing drugs, Zhang and colleagues combined multiple computational techniques that simulate drug-virus interactions from different, complementary perspectives.
They used this hybrid approach to screen 1,906 existing drugs for their potential ability to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 by targeting a viral protein called RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP).
The novel screening approach identified four promising drugs, which were then tested against SARS-CoV-2 in lab experiments.
Two of the drugs, pralatrexate and azithromycin, successfully inhibited replication of the virus. Further lab experiments showed that pralatrexate more strongly inhibited viral replication than did remdesivir, a drug that is currently used to treat some Covid-19 patients.
Pralatrexate is a medication used for the treatment of relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Lymphoma is cancer that begins in infection-fighting cells of the immune system, called lymphocytes.
These findings suggest that pralatrexate could potentially be repurposed to treat Covid-19. However, this chemotherapy drug can prompt significant side-effects and is used for people with terminal lymphoma; so immediate use for Covid-19 patients is not guaranteed, the study noted.
Also read: People with food and medicine allergies can take Covid-19 vaccines: MHRA
“We have demonstrated the value of our novel hybrid approach that combines deep-learning technologies with more traditional simulations of molecular dynamics,” Zhang said.
The team is now developing additional computational methods for generating novel molecular structures that could be developed into new drugs to treat Covid-19.