Progress in Studies on Structural and Remedial Aspects of Newly Born Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT

The article highlights an up-to-date progress in studies on structural and the remedial aspects of novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV, renamed as SARS-CoV-2, leading to the disease COVID-19, a pandemic. In general, all CoVs including SARS-CoV-2 are spherical positive single-stranded RNA viruses containing spike (S) protein, envelope (E) protein, nucleocapsid (N) protein, and membrane (M) protein, where S protein has a Receptor-binding Domain (RBD) that mediates the binding to host cell receptor, Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2). The article details the repurposing of some drugs to be tried for COVID-19 and presents the status of vaccine development so far. Besides drugs and vaccines, the role of Convalescent Plasma (CP) therapy to treat COVID-19 is also discussed.