Potency, Safety, and Pharmacokinetic Profiles of Potential Inhibitors Targeting SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease
Hylemariam Mihiretie Mengist’s expert review article titled “Potency, safety and pharmacokinetic profiles of potential inhibitors targeting SARS-CoV-2 main protease” was published online (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.630500/full) in Frontiers in Pharmacology on 1st February, 2021. Congratulations.
The co-authors of this paper are Daniel Mekonnen and Ahmed Mohammed. Prof. Tengchuan Jin and Prof. Ronghua Shi are the corresponding authors. Congratulations to all authors.
Abstract
Effective, safe, and pharmacokinetically suitable drugs are urgently needed to curb the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The main protease or 3C-like protease (Mpro or 3CLpro) of SARS-CoV-2 is considered an important target to formulate potent drugs corresponding to its crucial role in virus replication and maturation in addition to its relatively conserved active site. Promising baseline data on the potency and safety of drugs targeting SARS-CoV-2 Mpro are currently available. However, pre-clinical and clinical data on the pharmacokinetic profiles of these drugs is very limited. This review discusses the potency, safety and pharmacokinetic profiles of potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and forward directions on the development of future studies focusing on COVID-19 therapeutics.
Keywords: Potency, safety, pharmacokinetics, inhibitors, SARS-CoV-2, main protease, COVID-19
