Recent Developments in the Use of Kinase Inhibitors for Management of Viral Infections

• Published in: Journal of medicinal chemistry Vol. 65; no. 2; pp. 893 - 921
• Main Authors: Raghuvanshi, Rinky, Bharate, Sandip B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 27-01-2022
• Subjects: Antiviral Agents - therapeutic use; COVID-19 - drug therapy; COVID-19 - virology; Drug Approval - legislation & jurisprudence; Drug Repositioning; High-Throughput Screening Assays; Humans; Protein Kinase Inhibitors - therapeutic use; SARS-CoV-2 - isolation & purification; United States; United States Food and Drug Administration; Virus Diseases - drug therapy; United States
• ISSN: 0022-2623; 1520-4804
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c01467

Kinases are a group of therapeutic targets involved in the progression of numerous diseases, including cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and viral infections. The majority of approved antiviral agents are inhibitors of virus-specific targets that are encoded by individual viruses. These inhibitors are narrow-spectrum agents that can cause resistance development. Viruses are dependent on host cellular proteins, including kinases, for progression of their life-cycle. Thus, targeting kinases is an important therapeutic approach to discovering broad-spectrum antiviral agents. As there are a large number of FDA approved kinase inhibitors for various indications, their repurposing for viral infections is an attractive and time-sparing strategy. Many kinase inhibitors, including baricitinib, ruxolitinib, imatinib, tofacitinib, pacritinib, zanubrutinib, and ibrutinib, are under clinical investigation for COVID-19. Herein, we discuss FDA approved kinase inhibitors, along with a repertoire of clinical/preclinical stage kinase inhibitors that possess antiviral activity or are useful in the management of viral infections.