Current status and bottlenecks of global pharmaceutical developments against COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in February 2003 in Guangdong, China, middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) in September2012 in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the current COVID-19 pandemics in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, are all caused by coronaviruses, and patients primarily died of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Compared with more than 5 years of wreaking havoc from MERS-CoV and Ebor, China successfully contains the SARS-CoV within one year, which shows her advantages in political governance controlling such pandemics. Many coronaviruses have been separated and their molecular structures analyzed. However, there is no specific anti-coronavirus drug developed in the world since the outbreaks. The problems come from not only pharmaceutical technology per se that must treat both coronaviruses and their life-threatening ARDS, but also the small size of patients who could immune against the coronaviruses after infections resulting in pharmaceutical reluctance to invest in the area. Facing both the pharmaceutical and social-economic bottlenecks, here, we summarized the current development of anti-coronavirus drugs, and proposed the strategies of repurposing existing drugs and preparing their pharmacological combinations to fight the viruses including COVID-19 based on a well-understanding of how the coronaviruses enter the host and damage our respiratory system.