Editorial: Development/repurposing of drugs to tackle the multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

COVID-19, the severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and identified for the first time in China in 2019, was recognized in 2020 as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (Wu et al., 2020; WHO, 2023). Although elder people and all those with underlying medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, or cancer are more likely to develop serious illness, people at any age can become seriously ill or die (WHO, 2023). The efforts of pharmaceutical companies and academia have successfully led to several vaccines against this virus in an unprecedented short period of time. Although vaccines provide protection to healthy people, they could be not effective for immune compromised individuals or those bearing some risky pathological comorbidities. Additionally, mutations could generate viral variants unaffected by currently available vaccines. Therefore, new chemotherapeutic agents are urgently needed for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 in order to reduce virus dissemination and mortality. Although huge efforts are beingmade since 2020 towards the development of new drugs or the repurposing of already approved drugs to other targets, which would lead to a significant drop in the approval time of these drugs, drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 are not yet a reality (Ashburn and Thor, 2004; Nosengo, 2016; WHO, 2023). At present, there is a clinical need for direct-acting antivirals targeting SARS-CoV-2 to complement existing therapeutic strategies. Accordingly, the aim of this Research Topic of Frontiers in Drug Discovery, Antiinfective Agents, is to collect latest research on the topic focused on: