Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Non-Coding RNAs and Innovative Therapeutic Strategies to Target the 5’UTR of SARS-CoV-2
,
,
,
,
,
*
Version 1
: Received: 23 April 2020 / Approved: 24 April 2020 / Online: 24 April 2020 (04:16:20 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Abstract
After the increasing number of SARS-CoV-2 infections all over the world, researchers and clinicians are struggling to find a vaccine or innovative therapeutic strategies to treat this viral infection. The SARS-CoV infection that occurred in 2002, MERS and other more common infectious diseases such as HCV, led to the discovery of many RNA-based drugs. Among them, siRNAs and antisense LNAs have been demonstrated to have effective antiviral effects both in animal models and humans. Owing to the high genomic homology of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV (80-82%) the use of these molecules could be employed successfully also to target this emerging coronavirus. Trying to translate this approach to treat COVID-19, we analyzed the common structural features of viral 5’UTR regions that can be targeted by non-coding RNAs and we also identified miRNAs binding sites suitable for designing RNA-based drugs to be employed successfully against SARS-CoV-2.
Keywords
SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; 5’UTR; miRNAs; RNAi; GapmeRs
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Comments (0)
We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.
Leave a public commentSend a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
