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Broad-spectrum Antiviral
Broad-spectrum antivirals (BSAs) are a class of molecules or compounds, which inhibit the replication of a broad range of viruses (i.e. viruses belonging to two or more viral families). BSAs could be divided into experimental and investigational agents, and approved drugs. BSAs work by inhibiting viral proteins (such as polymerases and proteases) or by targeting host cell factors and processes exploited by different viruses during infection. As of 2021, there are 150 known BSAs in varying stages of development, effective against 78 human viruses. BSAs are potential candidates for treatment of emerging and re-emerging viruses, such as ebola, marburg, and SARS-CoV-2. Many BSAs show antiviral activity against other viruses than originally investigated (such as remdesivir and interferon alpha). Efforts in drug repurposing for SARS-CoV-2 is currently underway. A database of BSAs and viruses they inhibit could be found here (https://drugvirus.info/). See also * Broad-spectrum anti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compounding
In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for medical reasons, such as administration in a different format (ex: tablet to liquid), to avoid a non-active ingredient the patient is allergic to, or to provide an exact dose that isn't commercially available. Medically necessary compounding is referred to as "traditional" compounding. It may also be done for medically optional reasons, such as preference of flavor or texture, or dietary restrictions. Hospital pharmacies typically engage in compounding medications for intravenous administration, whereas outpatient or community pharmacies typically engage in compounding medications for oral or topical administration. Due to the rising cost of compounding and drug shortages, some hospitals outsource their compounding needs to large-scale com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viruses
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1892 article describing a non-bacterial pathogen infecting tobacco plants and the discovery of the tobacco mosaic virus by Martinus Beijerinck in 1898,Dimmock p. 4 more than 9,000 virus species have been described in detail of the millions of types of viruses in the environment. Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity. The study of viruses is known as virology, a subspeciality of microbiology. When infected, a host cell is often forced to rapidly produce thousands of copies of the original virus. When not inside an infected cell or in the process of infecting a cell, viruses exist in the form of independent particles, or ''virions'', consisting of (i) the genetic material ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viral Protein
A viral protein is both a component and a product of a virus. Viral proteins are grouped according to their functions, and groups of viral proteins include structural proteins, nonstructural proteins, regulatory proteins, and accessory proteins. Viruses are non-living and do not have the means to reproduce on their own, instead depending on their host cell's resources in order to reproduce. Thus, viruses do not code for many of their own viral proteins, and instead use the host cell's machinery to produce the viral proteins they require for replication. Viral structural proteins Most viral structural proteins are components for the capsid and the envelope of the virus. Capsid The genetic material of a virus is stored within a viral protein structure called the capsid. The capsid is a "shield" that protects the viral nucleic acids from getting degraded by host enzymes or other types of pesticides or pestilences. It also functions to attach the virion to its host, and enable t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polymerase
A polymerase is an enzyme ( EC 2.7.7.6/7/19/48/49) that synthesizes long chains of polymers or nucleic acids. DNA polymerase and RNA polymerase are used to assemble DNA and RNA molecules, respectively, by copying a DNA template strand using base-pairing interactions or RNA by half ladder replication. A DNA polymerase from the thermophilic bacterium, '' Thermus aquaticus'' (''Taq'') ( PDBbr>1BGX EC 2.7.7.7) is used in the polymerase chain reaction, an important technique of molecular biology. A polymerase may be template dependent or template independent. Poly-A-polymerase is an example of template independent polymerase. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase also known to have template independent and template dependent activities. Types By function *DNA polymerase (DNA-directed DNA polymerase, DdDP) **Family A: DNA polymerase I; Pol γ, θ, ν **Family B: DNA polymerase II; Pol α, δ, ε, ζ **Family C: DNA polymerase III holoenzyme **Family X: Pol β, λ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protease
A protease (also called a peptidase, proteinase, or proteolytic enzyme) is an enzyme that catalyzes (increases reaction rate or "speeds up") proteolysis, breaking down proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids, and spurring the formation of new protein products. They do this by cleaving the peptide bonds within proteins by hydrolysis, a reaction where water breaks bonds. Proteases are involved in many biological functions, including digestion of ingested proteins, protein catabolism (breakdown of old proteins), and cell signaling. In the absence of functional accelerants, proteolysis would be very slow, taking hundreds of years. Proteases can be found in all forms of life and viruses. They have independently evolved multiple times, and different classes of protease can perform the same reaction by completely different catalytic mechanisms. Hierarchy of proteases Based on catalytic residue Proteases can be classified into seven broad groups: * Serine protea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emergent Virus
An emergent virus (or emerging virus) is a virus that is either newly appeared, notably increasing in incidence/ geographic range or has the potential to increase in the near future. Emergent viruses are a leading cause of emerging infectious diseases and raise public health challenges globally, given their potential to cause outbreaks of disease which can lead to epidemics and pandemics. As well as causing disease, emergent viruses can also have severe economic implications. Recent examples include the SARS-related coronaviruses, which have caused the 2002-2004 outbreak of SARS (SARS-CoV-1) and the 2019–21 pandemic of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Other examples include the human immunodeficiency virus which causes HIV/AIDS; the viruses responsible for Ebola; the H5N1 influenza virus responsible for avian flu; and H1N1/09, which caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic (an earlier emergent strain of H1N1 caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic). Viral emergence in humans is often a conseq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ebolavirus
The genus ''Ebolavirus'' (- or ; - or ) is a virological taxon included in the family '' Filoviridae'' (filament-shaped viruses), order ''Mononegavirales''. The members of this genus are called ebolaviruses, and encode their genome in the form of single-stranded negative-sense RNA. The six known virus species are named for the region where each was originally identified: ''Bundibugyo ebolavirus'', ''Reston ebolavirus'', ''Sudan ebolavirus'', '' Taï Forest ebolavirus'' (originally ''Côte d'Ivoire ebolavirus''), ''Zaire ebolavirus'', and '' Bombali ebolavirus''. The last is the most recent species to be named and was isolated from Angolan free-tailed bats in Sierra Leone. Each species of the genus ''Ebolavirus'' has one member virus, and four of these cause Ebola virus disease (EVD) in humans, a type of hemorrhagic fever having a very high case fatality rate. The Reston virus has caused EVD in other primates. ''Zaire ebolavirus'' has the highest mortality rate of the ebolaviru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marburg Virus
Marburg virus (MARV) is a hemorrhagic fever virus of the '' Filoviridae'' family of viruses and a member of the species '' Marburg marburgvirus'', genus '' Marburgvirus''. It causes Marburg virus disease in primates, a form of viral hemorrhagic fever. The virus is considered to be extremely dangerous. The World Health Organization (WHO) rates it as a Risk Group 4 Pathogen (requiring biosafety level 4-equivalent containment). In the United States, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ranks it as a Category A Priority Pathogen and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists it as a Category A Bioterrorism Agent. It is also listed as a biological agent for export control by the Australia Group. The virus can be transmitted by exposure to one species of fruit bats or it can be transmitted between people via body fluids through unprotected sex and broken skin. The disease can cause haemorrhage, fever, and other symptoms similar to Ebola, which be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SARS-CoV-2
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a provisional name, 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), and has also been called the human coronavirus 2019 (HCoV-19 or hCoV-19). First identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, and a pandemic on March 11, 2020. SARS‑CoV‑2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that is contagious in humans. SARS‑CoV‑2 is a virus of the species '' severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus'' (SARSr-CoV), related to the SARS-CoV-1 virus that caused the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. Despite its close relation to SARS-CoV-1, its closest known relatives, with which it forms a sister group, are the derived ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Remdesivir
Remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, Text was copied from this source which is © European Medicines Agency. Reproduction is authorized provided the source is acknowledged. is a broad-spectrum antiviral medication developed by the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. It is administered via injection into a vein. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, remdesivir was approved or authorized for emergency use to treat COVID‑19 in numerous countries. Remdesivir was originally developed to treat hepatitis C, and was subsequently investigated for Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus infections before being studied as a post-infection treatment for COVID‑19. Remdesivir is a prodrug that is intended to allow intracellular delivery of GS-441524 monophosphate and subsequent biotransformation into GS-441524 triphosphate, a ribo nucleotide analogue inhibitor of viral RNA polymerase. The most common side effect in healthy volunteers is raised blood levels of liver en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COVID-19 Drug Repurposing Research
Drug repositioning (also known as drug repurposing, re-profiling, re-tasking, or therapeutic switching) is the repurposing of an approved drug for the treatment of a different disease or medical condition than that for which it was originally developed. This is one line of scientific research which is being pursued to develop safe and effective COVID-19 treatments. Other research directions include the development of a COVID-19 vaccine and convalescent plasma transfusion. Several existing antiviral medications, previously developed or used as treatments for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), HIV/AIDS, and malaria, have been researched as potential COVID-19 treatments, with some moving into clinical trials. In a statement to the journal ''Nature Biotechnology'' in February 2020, US National Institutes of Health Viral Ecology Unit chief Vincent Munster said, "The general genomic layout and the general replication kinetics and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broad-spectrum Antibiotic
A broad-spectrum antibiotic is an antibiotic that acts on the two major bacterial groups, Gram-positive and Gram-negative, or any antibiotic that acts against a wide range of disease-causing bacteria. These medications are used when a bacterial infection is suspected but the group of bacteria is unknown (also called empiric therapy) or when infection with multiple groups of bacteria is suspected. This is in contrast to a narrow-spectrum antibiotic, which is effective against only a specific group of bacteria. Although powerful, broad-spectrum antibiotics pose specific risks, particularly the disruption of native, normal bacteria and the development of antimicrobial resistance. An example of a commonly used broad-spectrum antibiotic is ampicillin. Bacterial targets Antibiotics are often grouped by their ability to act on different bacterial groups. Although bacteria are biologically classified using taxonomy, disease-causing bacteria have historically been classified by their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
