Abstract
An international research consortium has identified potential drug targets and therapies for the three coronaviruses—SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and MERS-CoV—that have caused recent epidemics and the current pandemic.
The team, which included representatives from EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) near Cambridge, England, several other academic teams from around the world, and two biotech companies, hopes that looking at all three viruses will not only help combat the current COVID-19 pandemic, but also to target new coronaviruses that arise in the future.
“These analyses demonstrate how biological and molecular information are translated into real-world implications for the treatment of COVID-19 and other viral diseases,” says Pedro Beltrao, Ph.D., a group leader at EBI and senior researcher on the study. “By looking across the species, we have the capability to predict pan-coronavirus therapeutics that may be effective in treating the current pandemic, which we believe will also offer promising therapeutics for a future coronavirus as well.”
As reported in the journal Science, the researchers generated maps of all three viruses showing how viral and human proteins interact to search for potential targets for treatments..