Evaluation of In Vitro and In Vivo Antiviral Activities of Vitamin D for SARS-CoV-2 and Variants

• Main Authors: Chee-Keng Mok (Author), Yan Ling Ng (Author), Bintou Ahmadou Ahidjo (Author), Zhen Qin Aw (Author), Huixin Chen (Author), Yi Hao Wong (Author), Regina Ching Hua Lee (Author), Marcus Wing Choy Loe (Author), Jing Liu (Author), Kai Sen Tan (Author), Parveen Kaur (Author), De Yun Wang (Author), Erwei Hao (Author), Xiaotao Hou (Author), Yong Wah Tan (Author), Jiagang Deng (Author), Justin Jang Hann Chu (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: MDPI AG, 2023-03-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented medical and healthcare challenges worldwide. With the continual emergence and spread of new COVID-19 variants, four drug compound libraries were interrogated for their antiviral activities against SARS-CoV-2. Here, we show that the drug screen has resulted in 121 promising anti-SARS-CoV-2 compounds, of which seven were further shortlisted for hit validation: citicoline, pravastatin sodium, tenofovir alafenamide, imatinib mesylate, calcitriol, dexlansoprazole, and prochlorperazine dimaleate. In particular, the active form of vitamin D, calcitriol, exhibits strong potency against SARS-CoV-2 on cell-based assays and is shown to work by modulating the vitamin D receptor pathway to increase antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin expression. However, the weight, survival rate, physiological conditions, histological scoring, and virus titre between SARS-CoV-2 infected K18-hACE2 mice pre-treated or post-treated with calcitriol were negligible, indicating that the differential effects of calcitriol may be due to differences in vitamin D metabolism in mice and warrants future investigation using other animal models.

Item Description

10.3390/pharmaceutics15030925
1999-4923