Could an approved drug be a coronavirus treatment?

The ongoing outbreak of a novel coronavirus has drug companies racing to develop vaccines, test antiviral pills, and discover anti-infectious antibodies. But what if there’s a workable therapy already sitting on pharmacy shelves?

To answer that question, a group of Michigan State University researchers took a look at SARS, an older coronavirus with strong genetic similarities to the novel one. The two viruses share almost identical proteases, which are enzymes used for viral replication. And there's already a reliable 3-D model of the SARS protease, so the researchers scrubbed a database on the activity of about 1,500 FDA-approved drugs, loaded the results into modeling software, and virtually tested whether each therapy might bind to it and thus treat infection.

The results, uploaded to a preprint server and not yet peer-reviewed, isolated three promising candidates: the cancer drugs Velcade and Iclusig, and the insomnia treatment flurazepam. The next step would be testing these drugs in animal models of the novel coronavirus to see whether the simulation was onto something.