New insights for infection mechanism and potential targets of COVID19: Three Chinese patent medicines and three Chinese medicine formulas as promising therapeutic approaches
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with high pathogenicity and infectiousness has become a sudden and lethal pandemic worldwide. Currently, there is no accepted specific drug for COVID-19 treatment. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to clarify the pathogenic mechanism and develop effective therapies for patients with COVID-19. According to several reliable reports from China, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), especially for three Chinese patent medicines and three Chinese medicine formulas, has been demonstrated to effectively alleviate the symptoms of COVID-19 either used alone or in combination with Western medicines. In this review, we systematically summarized and analyzed the pathogenesis of COVID-19, the detailed clinical practice, active ingredients investigation, network pharmacology prediction and underlying mechanism verification of three Chinese patent medicines and three Chinese medicine formulas in the COVID-19 combat. Additionally, we summarized some promising and high-frequency drugs of these prescriptions and discussed their regulatory mechanism, which provides guidance for the development of new drugs against COVID-19. Collectively, by addressing critical challenges, for example, unclear targets and complicated active ingredients of these medicines and formulas, we believe that TCM will represent promising and efficient strategies for curing COVID-19 and related pandemics.
This work was supported by the Innovation Team and Talents Cultivation Program of National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. ZYYCXTD-C-202006 to XG and XL); Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (No. 7212174 to XL); National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82004045 to XL); Beijing Nova Program of Science & Technology (No. Z191100001119088 to XL); and the Young Talents Promotion Project of China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. 2020-QNRC2-01 to XL).
Kexin Jia a, Yijie Li a, Tiegang Liu b, c, Xiaohong Gu b, c,*, Xiaojiaoyang Li a,*. New insights for infection mechanism and potential targets of COVID19: Three Chinese patent medicines and three Chinese medicine formulas as promising therapeutic approaches[J]. Chinese Herbal Medicines (CHM),2023,15(2):157-168
