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National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences

Research to identify new treatments in COVID 19

Following up on these concerns, a team of researchers from INCDSB has published a paper dedicated to better understanding the potential for drug reuse in COVID-19. Thus, control strategies on host factors essential for SARS-CoV-2 infection were analysed. Comprehensive targeted protein-protein interaction networks integrating top ranked host factors, drug target proteins and targeted protein-protein interaction data were constructed.

Networks were screened to identify drug targets and combinations of drugs that provide effective control of host factors. Findings against clinical trial data and bioinformatics studies were validated. The method provides new insight into the molecular details of the disease and potential novel therapeutic targets for it. Our approach to drug repurposing is significant beyond COVID-19 and can be applied to other diseases.

Figure 1: Network controllability for drug repurposing: study design. We included all the approved and
investigational small molecule drugs, except for those illicit or nutraceutical. For each drug (red in the
bottom-left network) we identified their drug targets ([5]) (yellow in the bottom-left network). We also
included the top 200 host factors required for SARS-CoV-2 infection found by [3] for viral loads MOI 0.01
and MOI 0.3, and all protein-protein directed interactions from KEGG, OmniPath and Signor. Using
the NetControl4BioMed platform ([7]) we identified all the control paths of length at most 3 from drug
targets to the host factors. We ranked the drugs based on the number of host factors they can control
through any of their targets.