Genomic Variants Driven Drug Repurposing for SARS-CoV-2 Using Bioinformatics-based Approach

Abstract

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) first appeared in China in December 2019 and since then, the outbreak expanded globally. Due to the limited supply of SARS-CoV-2 medicines on the market, an immediate strategy was required to accelerate the development of new drugs. Drug repurposing is one of the novel approaches for the therapeutics of several life-threatening diseases. This study identified 408 SARS-CoV-2-associated SNPs from the Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) catalog and 391 risk genes associated with SARS-CoV-2. The prioritization was performed based on six categories of functional annotations. SARS-CoV-2 risk genes were mapped into an expanded PPI network using the STRING database. We discovered the drugs that target deregulate SARS-CoV-2 risk genes. Here, we demonstrated the drug target genes overlapped with the drugs for other clinical indications. Hence, we suggest that the identified drugs may be repurposed for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. Overall, this study emphasizes the integration of functional genomic variants and bioinformatics-based approaches to drive drug repurposing efforts for the therapeutics options for COVID-19.