National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project - HIV/HSV meds and Coronavirus

[Rob Folan-Johnson]

So glad to see that Jules Levin is still doing the NATAP thing. Always was an excellent activist/reporter and source. Also happy to know Jules is still alive and kicking.

Take a look at the summary below and the PDF: Interesting. Much more clinical data needed but think I should get a script for Rayataz again just in case (I'm not on a PI regimen now).  Was surprised that the NNRTI's and even herpes meds, in addition to the PI's, MAY have some impact as well. Will they help alleviate symptoms and reduce severity/mortality? Should PWHIV and caregivers consider getting scripts for at least one each of the various classes of drugs that may help?  When should one use them? As a preventative that may stave off infection (too much to hope for?) or when one becomes symptomatic. We need to know soon or just with try a regimen on your own and hope for the best. 

There is more on Corona on the NATAP site at http://www.natap.org/

Rob

Reyataz for Coronavirus May Be Best       Predicting commercially available antiviral drugs that may act on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), Wuhan, China through a drug-target interaction deep learning model   Download the PDF here   Bo Ram Beck, Bonggun Shin, Yoonjung Choi, Sungsoo Park, Keunsoo Kang   Abstract The infection of a novel coronavirus found in Wuhan of China (2019-nCoV) is rapidly spreading, and the incidence rate is increasing worldwide. Due to the lack of effective treatment options for 2019-nCoV, various strategies are being tested in China, including drug repurposing. In this study, we used our pretrained deep learning-based drug-target interaction model called Molecule Transformer-Drug Target Interaction (MT-DTI) to identify commercially available drugs that could act on viral proteins of 2019-nCoV. The result showed that atazanavir, an antiretroviral medication used to treat and prevent the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is the best chemical compound, showing a inhibitory potency with Kd of 94.94 nM against the 2019-nCoV 3C-like proteinase, followed by efavirenz (199.17 nM), ritonavir (204.05 nM), and dolutegravir (336.91 nM). Interestingly, lopinavir, ritonavir, and darunavir are all designed to target viral proteinases. However, in our prediction, they may also bind to the replication complex components of 2019-nCoV with an inhibitory potency with Kd < 1000 nM. In addition, we also found that several antiviral agents, such as Kaletra, could be used for the treatment of 2019-nCoV, although there is no real-world evidence supporting the prediction. Overall, we suggest that the list of antiviral drugs identified by the MT-DTI model should be considered, when establishing effective treatment strategies for 2019-nCoV.