Teicoplanin-A New Use for an Old Drug in the COVID-19 Era?

Navigating Antibacterial Frontiers: A Panoramic Exploration of Antibacterial Landscapes, Resistance Mechanisms, and Emerging Therapeutic Strategies

The development of effective antibacterial solutions has become paramount in maintaining global health in this era of increasing bacterial threats and rampant antibiotic resistance. Traditional antibiotics have played a significant role in combating bacterial infections throughout history. However, the emergence of novel resistant strains necessitates constant innovation in antibacterial research. We have analyzed the data on antibacterials from the CAS Content Collection, the largest human-curated collection of published scientific knowledge, which has proven valuable for quantitative analysis of global scientific knowledge. Our analysis focuses on mining the CAS Content Collection data for recent publications (since 2012). This article aims to explore the intricate landscape of antibacterial research while reviewing the advancement from traditional antibiotics to novel and emerging antibacterial strategies. By delving into the resistance mechanisms, this paper highlights the need to find alternate strategies to address the growing concern.

Antimicrobial Peptides towards Clinical Application-A Long History to Be Concluded

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are molecules with an amphipathic structure that enables them to interact with bacterial membranes. This interaction can lead to membrane crossing and disruption with pore formation, culminating in cell death. They are produced naturally in various organisms, including humans, animals, plants and microorganisms. In higher animals, they are part of the innate immune system, where they counteract infection by bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites. AMPs can also be designed de novo by bioinformatic approaches or selected from combinatorial libraries, and then produced by chemical or recombinant procedures. Since their discovery, AMPs have aroused interest as potential antibiotics, although few have reached the market due to stability limits or toxicity. Here, we describe the development phase and a number of clinical trials of antimicrobial peptides. We also provide an update on AMPs in the pharmaceutical industry and an overall view of their therapeutic market. Modifications to peptide structures to improve stability in vivo and bioavailability are also described.

Preclinical and Clinical Investigations of Potential Drugs and Vaccines for COVID-19 Therapy: A Comprehensive Review With Recent Update

The COVID-19 pandemic-led worldwide healthcare crisis necessitates prompt societal, ecological, and medical efforts to stop or reduce the rising number of fatalities. Numerous mRNA based vaccines and vaccines for viral vectors have been licensed for use in emergencies which showed 90% to 95% efficacy in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, safety issues, vaccine reluctance, and skepticism remain major concerns for making mass vaccination a successful approach to treat COVID-19. Hence, alternative therapeutics is needed for eradicating the global burden of COVID-19 from developed and low-resource countries. Repurposing current medications and drug candidates could be a more viable option for treating SARS-CoV-2 as these therapies have previously passed a number of significant checkpoints for drug development and patient care. Besides vaccines, this review focused on the potential usage of alternative therapeutic agents including antiviral, antiparasitic, and antibacterial drugs, protease inhibitors, neuraminidase inhibitors, and monoclonal antibodies that are currently undergoing preclinical and clinical investigations to assess their effectiveness and safety in the treatment of COVID-19. Among the repurposed drugs, remdesivir is considered as the most promising agent, while favipiravir, molnupiravir, paxlovid, and lopinavir/ritonavir exhibited improved therapeutic effects in terms of elimination of viruses. However, the outcomes of treatment with oseltamivir, umifenovir, disulfiram, teicoplanin, and ivermectin were not significant. It is noteworthy that combining multiple drugs as therapy showcases impressive effectiveness in managing individuals with COVID-19. Tocilizumab is presently employed for the treatment of patients who exhibit COVID-19-related pneumonia. Numerous antiviral drugs such as galidesivir, griffithsin, and thapsigargin are under clinical trials which could be promising for treating COVID-19 individuals with severe symptoms. Supportive treatment for patients of COVID-19 may involve the use of corticosteroids, convalescent plasma, stem cells, pooled antibodies, vitamins, and natural substances. This study provides an updated progress in SARS-CoV-2 medications and a crucial guide for inventing novel interventions against COVID-19.

Severe COVID-19: Drugs and Clinical Trials

By January of 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic had led to a reported total of 6,700,883 deaths and 662,631,114 cases worldwide. To date, there have been no effective therapies or standardized treatment schemes for this disease; therefore, the search for effective prophylactic and therapeutic strategies is a primary goal that must be addressed. This review aims to provide an analysis of the most efficient and promising therapies and drugs for the prevention and treatment of severe COVID-19, comparing their degree of success, scope, and limitations, with the aim of providing support to health professionals in choosing the best pharmacological approach. An investigation of the most promising and effective treatments against COVID-19 that are currently available was carried out by employing search terms including "Convalescent plasma therapy in COVID-19" or "Viral polymerase inhibitors" and "COVID-19" in the Clinicaltrials.gov and PubMed databases. From the current perspective and with the information available from the various clinical trials assessing the efficacy of different therapeutic options, we conclude that it is necessary to standardize certain variables-such as the viral clearance time, biomarkers associated with severity, hospital stay, requirement of invasive mechanical ventilation, and mortality rate-in order to facilitate verification of the efficacy of such treatments and to better assess the repeatability of the most effective and promising results.

COVID-19 drugs: potential interaction with ATP-binding cassette transporters P-glycoprotein and breast cancer resistance protein

Background

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has resulted in acute respiratory distress, fatal systemic manifestations (extrapulmonary as well as pulmonary), and premature mortality among many patients. Therapy for COVID-19 has focused on the treatment of symptoms and of acute inflammation (cytokine storm) and the prevention of viral infection. Although the mechanism of COVID-19 is not fully understood, potential clinical targets have been identified for pharmacological, immunological, and vaccinal approaches.

Area covered

Pharmacological approaches including drug repositioning have been a priority for initial COVID-19 therapy due to the time-consuming nature of the vaccine development process. COVID-19 drugs have been shown to manage the antiviral infection cycle (cell entry and replication of proteins and genomic RNA) and anti-inflammation. In this review, we evaluated the interaction of current COVID-19 drugs with two ATP-binding cassette transporters [P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP)] and potential drug-drug interactions (DDIs) among COVID-19 drugs, especially those associated with P-gp and BCRP efflux transporters.

Expert opinion

Overall, understanding the pharmacodynamic/pharmacokinetic DDIs of COVID-19 drugs can be useful for pharmacological therapy in COVID-19 patients.

A review on computer-aided chemogenomics and drug repositioning for rational COVID-19 drug discovery

Application of materials capable of energy harvesting to increase the efficiency and environmental adaptability is sometimes reflected in the ability of discovery of some traces in an environment-either experimentally or computationally-to enlarge practical application window. The emergence of computational methods, particularly computer-aided drug discovery (CADD), provides ample opportunities for the rapid discovery and development of unprecedented drugs. The expensive and time-consuming process of traditional drug discovery is no longer feasible, for nowadays the identification of potential drug candidates is much easier for therapeutic targets through elaborate in silico approaches, allowing the prediction of the toxicity of drugs, such as drug repositioning (DR) and chemical genomics (chemogenomics). Coronaviruses (CoVs) are cross-species viruses that are able to spread expeditiously from the into new host species, which in turn cause epidemic diseases. In this sense, this review furnishes an outline of computational strategies and their applications in drug discovery. A special focus is placed on chemogenomics and DR as unique and emerging system-based disciplines on CoV drug and target discovery to model protein networks against a library of compounds. Furthermore, to demonstrate the special advantages of CADD methods in rapidly finding a drug for this deadly virus, numerous examples of the recent achievements grounded on molecular docking, chemogenomics, and DR are reported, analyzed, and interpreted in detail. It is believed that the outcome of this review assists developers of energy harvesting materials and systems for detection of future unexpected kinds of CoVs or other variants.

Immobilised teicoplanin does not demonstrate antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus

Antibacterial bone biomaterial coatings appeal to orthopaedics, dentistry and veterinary medicine. Achieving the successful, stable conjugation of suitable compounds to biomaterial surfaces is a major challenge. A pragmatic starting point is to make use of existing, approved antibiotics which are known to remain functional in a stationary, immobilised state. This includes the macrocyclic glycopeptide, teicoplanin, following the discovery, in the 1990's, that it could be used as a chiral selector in chromatographic enantiomeric separations. Importantly teicoplanin works at the level of the bacterial cell wall making it a potential candidate for biomaterial functionalisations. We initially sought to functionalise titanium (Ti) with polydopamine and use this platform to capture teicoplanin, however we were unable to avoid the natural affinity of the antibiotic to the oxide surface of the metal. Whilst the interaction between teicoplanin and Ti was robust, we found that phosphate resulted in antibiotic loss. Before contemplating the covalent attachment of teicoplanin to Ti we examined whether a commercial teicoplanin stationary phase could kill staphylococci. Whilst this commercially available material could bind N-Acetyl-L-Lys-D-Ala-D-Ala it was unable to kill bacteria. We therefore strongly discourage attempts at covalently immobilising teicoplanin and/or other glycopeptide antibiotics in the pursuit of novel antibacterial bone biomaterials.

Glycopeptide Antibiotic Teicoplanin Inhibits Cell Entry of SARS-CoV-2 by Suppressing the Proteolytic Activity of Cathepsin L

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), public health worldwide has been greatly threatened. The development of an effective treatment for this infection is crucial and urgent but is hampered by the incomplete understanding of the viral infection mechanisms and the lack of specific antiviral agents. We previously reported that teicoplanin, a glycopeptide antibiotic that has been commonly used in the clinic to treat bacterial infection, significantly restrained the cell entry of Ebola virus, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV by specifically inhibiting the activity of cathepsin L (CTSL). Here, we found that the cleavage sites of CTSL on the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 were highly conserved among all the variants. The treatment with teicoplanin suppressed the proteolytic activity of CTSL on spike and prevented the cellular infection of different pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Teicoplanin potently prevented the entry of SARS-CoV-2 into the cellular cytoplasm with an IC50 of 2.038 μM for the Wuhan-Hu-1 reference strain and an IC50 of 2.116 μM for the SARS-CoV-2 (D614G) variant. The pre-treatment of teicoplanin also prevented SARS-CoV-2 infection in hACE2 mice. In summary, our data reveal that CTSL is required for both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV infection and demonstrate the therapeutic potential of teicoplanin for universal anti-CoVs intervention.

Computational Chemistry Study of Natural Apocarotenoids and Their Synthetic Glycopeptide Conjugates as Therapeutic Drugs

The objective of the research to be presented in the chapter is the determination of the chemical reactivity properties of some natural apocarotenoids and their synthetic glycopeptide conjugates that could have the ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication. The study will be based on the consideration of the Conceptual DFT branch of Density Functional Theory (DFT) through the consideration of particular successful model chemistry which has been demonstrated as satisfying the Janak and Ionization Energy theorems within Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) theory. The research will be complemented by a report of the ADMET and pharmacokinetic properties hoping that this information could be of help in the development of new pharmaceutical drugs for fighting COVID-19.