Inhibition of intracellular hepatitis C virus replication by nelfinavir and synergistic effect with interferon-alpha

Insights Into the Coinfections of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Hepatitis B Virus, Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Hepatitis C Virus, and Hepatitis B Virus-Hepatitis C Virus: Prevalence, Risk Factors, Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B virus, and hepatitis C virus are three blood-borne viruses that can cause major global health issues by increasing severe morbidity. There is a high risk of coinfection with these viruses in individuals because of their same transmission routes through blood using shared needles, syringes, other injection equipment, sexual transmission, or even vertical transmission. Coinfection can cause various liver-related illnesses, non-hepatic organ dysfunction, followed by death compared to any of these single infections. The treatment of coinfected patients is complicated due to the side effects of antiviral medication, resulting in drug resistance, hepatotoxicity, and a lack of required responses. On the other hand, coinfected individuals must be treated with multiple drugs simultaneously, such as for HIV either along with HBV or HCV and HBV and HCV. Therefore, diagnosing, treating, and controlling dual infections with HIV, HBV, or HCV is complicated and needs further investigation. This review focuses on the current prevalence, risk factors, and pathogenesis of dual infections with HIV, HBV, and HCV. We also briefly overviewed the diagnosis and treatment of coinfections of these three blood-borne viruses.

A multimodal deep learning-based drug repurposing approach for treatment of COVID-19

Abstract

Recently, various computational methods have been proposed to find new therapeutic applications of the existing drugs. The Multimodal Restricted Boltzmann Machine approach (MM-RBM), which has the capability to connect the information about the multiple modalities, can be applied to the problem of drug repurposing. The present study utilized MM-RBM to combine two types of data, including the chemical structures data of small molecules and differentially expressed genes as well as small molecules perturbations. In the proposed method, two separate RBMs were applied to find out the features and the specific probability distribution of each datum (modality). Besides, RBM was used to integrate the discovered features, resulting in the identification of the probability distribution of the combined data. The results demonstrated the significance of the clusters acquired by our model. These clusters were used to discover the medicines which were remarkably similar to the proposed medications to treat COVID-19. Moreover, the chemical structures of some small molecules as well as dysregulated genes’ effect led us to suggest using these molecules to treat COVID-19. The results also showed that the proposed method might prove useful in detecting the highly promising remedies for COVID-19 with minimum side effects. All the source codes are accessible using https://github.com/LBBSoft/Multimodal-Drug-Repurposing.git

Graphic abstract

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1007/s11030-020-10144-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The FDA-Approved Drug Nelfinavir Inhibits Lytic Cell-Free but Not Cell-Associated Nonlytic Transmission of Human Adenovirus

Adenoviruses (AdVs) are prevalent and give rise to chronic and recurrent disease. Human AdV (HAdV) species B and C, such as HAdV-C2, -C5, and -B14, cause respiratory disease and constitute a health threat for immunocompromised individuals. HAdV-Cs are well known for lysing cells owing to the E3 CR1-β-encoded adenovirus death protein (ADP). We previously reported a high-throughput image-based screening framework and identified an inhibitor of HAdV-C2 multiround infection, nelfinavir mesylate. Nelfinavir is the active ingredient of Viracept, an FDA-approved inhibitor of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) aspartyl protease that is used to treat AIDS. It is not effective against single-round HAdV infections. Here, we show that nelfinavir inhibits lytic cell-free transmission of HAdV, indicated by the suppression of comet-shaped infection foci in cell culture. Comet-shaped foci occur upon convection-based transmission of cell-free viral particles from an infected cell to neighboring uninfected cells. HAdV lacking ADP was insensitive to nelfinavir but gave rise to comet-shaped foci, indicating that ADP enhances but is not required for cell lysis. This was supported by the notion that HAdV-B14 and -B14p1 lacking ADP were highly sensitive to nelfinavir, although HAdV-A31, -B3, -B7, -B11, -B16, -B21, -D8, -D30, and -D37 were less sensitive. Conspicuously, nelfinavir uncovered slow-growing round HAdV-C2 foci, independent of neutralizing antibodies in the medium, indicative of nonlytic cell-to-cell transmission. Our study demonstrates the repurposing potential of nelfinavir with postexposure efficacy against different HAdVs and describes an alternative nonlytic cell-to-cell transmission mode of HAdV.

Potential Antiviral Options against SARS-CoV-2 Infection

As of June 2020, the number of people infected with severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to skyrocket, with more than 6.7 million cases worldwide. Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations (UN) has highlighted the need for better control of SARS-CoV-2 infections. However, developing novel virus-specific vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2 can be time-consuming and costly. Convalescent sera and safe-in-man broad-spectrum antivirals (BSAAs) are readily available treatment options. Here, we developed a neutralization assay using SARS-CoV-2 strain and Vero-E6 cells. We identified the most potent sera from recovered patients for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2-infected patients. We also screened 136 safe-in-man broad-spectrum antivirals against the SARS-CoV-2 infection in Vero-E6 cells and identified nelfinavir, salinomycin, amodiaquine, obatoclax, emetine and homoharringtonine. We found that a combination of orally available virus-directed nelfinavir and host-directed amodiaquine exhibited the highest synergy. Finally, we developed a website to disseminate the knowledge on available and emerging treatments of COVID-19.

Sustained Virologic Suppression After 4 Weeks of Ledipasvir/Sofosbuvir in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Co-Infection

Patient: Male, 28-year-old

Final Diagnosis: HCV infection

Symptoms: Not applicable

Medication: —

Clinical Procedure: —

Specialty: Infectious Diseases

Evaluation of antiviral drug synergy in an infectious HCV system

BACKGROUND

Direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) have greatly improved the treatment of HCV infection. To improve response and prevent resistance, combination regimens have been the focus of clinical development. Regimens are often first assessed in vitro, with most combination studies to date using subgenomic replicon systems, which do not replicate the complete HCV life cycle and preclude study of entry and assembly inhibitors. Infectious full-length HCV systems have been developed and are being used to test drug efficacy.

METHODS

Using cell-based HCV Con1b replicon and an infectious full-length HCV (HCVcc-Luc) infection system, we systematically tested the synergy, additivity or antagonism of combinations of protease, NS5A and nucleotide NS5B inhibitor classes as well as the combination of these DAAs with host-targeting agent cyclosporin A or non-antibody entry inhibitor (S)-chlorcyclizine. Two computational software packages, MacSynergyII and CalcuSyn, were used for data analysis.

RESULTS

Combinations between different classes showed good consistency across the two viral assay systems and two software platforms. Combinations between NS5A and nucleotide NS5B inhibitors were synergistic, while combinations of protease inhibitors with the other two classes were additive to slightly antagonistic. As expected, combinations of antivirals of the same class were additive. Combination studies between these DAA classes and cyclosporin A or (S)-chlorcyclizine demonstrated additive to synergistic effects and highly synergistic effects, respectively. Combinations of these drugs did not show any added or unexpected cytotoxicity.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results show that in vitro combination studies of anti-HCV DAAs in the HCVcc system may provide useful guidance for drug combination designs in clinical studies. We also demonstrate that these DAAs in combination with host-targeting agents or entry inhibitors may improve HCV treatment response.

Reaching beyond HIV/HCV: nelfinavir as a potential starting point for broad-spectrum protease inhibitors against dengue and chikungunya virus

Re-purposing HIV/HCV inhibitors against DENV and CHIKV using computer aided drug design.

HIV/HCV co-infection: pathogenesis, clinical complications, treatment, and new therapeutic technologies

World-wide, hepatitis C virus (HCV) accounts for approximately 130 million chronic infections, with an overall 3% prevalence. Four to 5 million persons are co-infected with HIV. It is well established that HIV has a negative impact on the natural history of HCV, including a higher rate of viral persistence, increased viral load, and more rapid progression to fibrosis, end-stage liver disease, and death. Whether HCV has a negative impact on HIV disease progression continues to be debated. However, following the introduction of effective combination antiretroviral therapy, the survival of coinfected individuals has significantly improved and HCV-associated diseases have emerged as the most important co-morbidities. In this review, we summarize the newest studies regarding the pathogenesis of HIV/HCV coinfection, including effects of coinfection on HIV disease progression, HCV-associated liver disease, the immune system, kidney and cardiovascular disease, and neurologic status; and effectiveness of current anti-HIV and HCV therapies and proposed new treatment strategies.

Unbiased probing of the entire hepatitis C virus life cycle identifies clinical compounds that target multiple aspects of the infection

Over 170 million people are chronically infected by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and at risk for dying from liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Current therapy is expensive, associated with significant side effects, and often ineffective. Discovery of antiviral compounds against HCV traditionally involves a priori target identification followed by biochemical screening and confirmation in cell-based replicon assays. Typically, this results in the discovery of compounds that address a few predetermined targets and are prone to select for escape variants. To attempt to identify antiviral compounds with broad target specificity, we developed an unbiased cell-based screening system involving multiple rounds of infection in a 96-well format. Analysis of a publicly available library of 446 clinically approved drugs identified 33 compounds that targeted both known and previously unexplored aspects of HCV infection, including entry, replication, and assembly. Discovery of novel viral and cellular targets in this manner will broaden the therapeutic armamentarium against this virus, allowing for the development of drug mixtures that should reduce the likelihood of mutational escape.