Phospholipidosis is a shared mechanism underlying the in vitro antiviral activity of many repurposed drugs against SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT: Repurposing drugs as treatments for COVID-19 has drawn much attention. A common strategy has been to screen for established drugs, typically developed for other indications, that are antiviral in cells or organisms. Intriguingly, most of the drugs that have emerged from these campaigns, though diverse in structure, share a common physical property: cationic amphiphilicity. Provoked by the similarity of these repurposed drugs to those inducing phospholipidosis, a well-known drug side effect, we investigated phospholipidosis as a mechanism for antiviral activity. We tested 23 cationic amphiphilic drugs-including those from phenotypic screens and others that we ourselves had found-for induction of phospholipidosis in cell culture. We found that most of the repurposed drugs, which included hyd

SUBMITTER: Tummino TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8010720 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature