June 25, 2021
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
Drug repurposing to counter COVID-19: antiviral activity may be induced by phospholipidosis
Over the past 16 months and against the backdrop of the COVID-19 health crisis, thousands of drugs have been tested with a view to repurposing to tackle SARS-CoV-2. Many of these drugs have demonstrated potential antiviral activity (23 compounds including hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, amiodarone and 4 others tested in clinical trials). Given this high number of potential treatments, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), the Quantitative Biosciences Institute, the Institut Pasteur and Novartis joined forces as part of an international collaboration to demonstrate that in vitro antiviral activity was in fact induced by a mechanism common to all the compounds: phospholipidosis. This research has revealed the importance of systematically testing phospholipidosis as part of the repurposing process, with a view to honing criteria for selecting drugs put forward for clinical trials. The results of the research were published in Science.