Natural Compounds for COVID-19 Antiviral Drug Discovery

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020 and throughout the subsequent peaks, global efforts were mobilized to find therapeutic interventions that will curtail the pandemic. Several vaccines have been made available since then to combat the infection and bring it under control. Although the current vaccines in public health practice provide clinical relief and prevention, vaccines are still not equitably available around the world. Equally worrisome is that COVID-19 is here to stay as a zoonotic infection.

It is estimated that “more than 6 out of every 10 known infectious diseases in people can be spread from animals, and 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals.” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). Long-term planetary health strategies will have to include antiviral drugs together with vaccine-based interventions for COVID-19 and other zoonotic outbreaks. Given this, vaccines will continue to be important but also antiviral drugs (Al-Taie et al, 2022).

Butler (2022) noted that endemic COVID-19 will not be necessarily mild going forward. “Something is endemic when it is prevalent in a particular group. It descends from the Greek endēmos, meaning native to a certain people. That's true of endemic viruses too. They have vastly different consequences for different groups within a single geographical area.” (Butler, 2022). We also do not know the public health impacts of repeated infections with COVID-19 over a lifetime. This longitudinal data gap is another rationale to build a broad array of planetary health interventions that aim for preventative, therapeutic, and diagnostic innovations. We need new ways of thinking in discovery science because antiviral drug discovery and development will be increasingly important to fight both the acute and the endemic COVID-19.

In this overarching content, the role of natural products in drug discovery cannot be underestimated. Yet, the prospect of new antiviral discovery from natural products is one area of planetary health that was least considered during the various peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this particular field, the intersection of natural products and COVID-19 drug discovery, is new, it is very much needed given the mentioned long-term outlook on zoonotic infections in the coming decades, including COVID-19.

Natural products remain as one of the major resources for chemically diverse molecular leads that could serve for future development as potent and safe antiviral drugs. There are both promises and challenges in the mentioned context. Many scholars and countries tend to confuse public use of a natural compound with its evidence-based efficacy and safety. It is in this context that multiomics and integrative biology research can help decipher and develop the right natural compounds as antivirals for COVID-19 in an evidence-based manner. Available multiomics platforms provide the necessary tools to screen, isolate, undertake in silico modeling, and evaluate the antiviral potentials of natural products.

COVID-19 morbidity and mortality continue to take its toll worldwide, as with other zoonotic infections. It is time to engage with natural products for multiomics-guided antiviral drug discovery that can help vitalize the innovation pipeline in planetary health.