Produtos naturais no combate à covid-19: uma revisão crítica de trabalhos publicados em 2020

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Rafael Willian de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFU
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufu.br/handle/123456789/30673
• topic: Produtos naturais; Covid-19; Tratamento; SARS; Natural products; Treatment; CNPQ::CIENCIAS EXATAS E DA TERRA::QUIMICA

The year 2020 was marked by a pandemic, caused by a highly contagious viral disease that was named COVID-19. The virus belonging to the Coronaviridae family is responsible for causing the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), becoming a growing threat to societies. The discovery of antiviral agents for the treatment of COVID-19 is extremely important because the immunization of the world population through the vaccine will be a long step. Among the antivirals used, we can highlight those originating from natural products. Many scientific articles have already reported natural compounds with antiviral activities, including against SARS. Nature is a great source of antiviral compounds, from which we can produce innovative therapies and products. Among the articles published in 2020, some of them demonstrated that the natural products used in traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of Covid-19 showed significant clinical efficacy, although the pharmacological mechanisms are not yet fully elucidated. Many works were published in 2020 with the theme of natural products in the treatment of COVID-19, presenting studies in vivo, in silico, in vitro, and also bibliographic review. Thus, a careful evaluation of these articles was necessary to find drug candidates that are promising in the treatment of COVID-19 and, therefore, to deepen the study of these compounds for the development of effective drugs. Among the published works, many of them carried out a survey of natural products that are antiviral against some type of SARS, not specifically against SARS-CoV-2. However, there are studies that, based on antivirals against some type of SARS, evaluated the in silico activity against SARS-CoV-2. In most in silico studies, the main protease of this virus 3CLpro was considered as the target of inhibition, due to its essential role in the processing of polyproteins that are translated from viral RNA. Compounds that have shown promise for coronavirus inhibition in humans include quercetin, baicalein, glycyrrhizin, and licorine, and are suitable if the therapeutic level of antiviral activity is achieved without exceeding toxic concentrations. Such compounds showed biological activity values of 42.79 µM, 1.69 µM, 0.37 µM, and 2.4 μg mL 1 for kaempferol, the binding energy of -8.58 Kcal mol 1 for the main SARS- protease VOC-2. Therefore, this review showed that it is important to carry out careful evaluations of publications about possible substances used to combat COVID-19. Besides, further research on the identification of active substances, the description of the mechanisms, as well as the analysis of efficiency and probable in vivo applications are necessary to assist the exploration of potent antiviral chemotherapeutic agents against SARS-CoV-2.