Structural and functional properties of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein: potential antivirus drug development for COVID-19

By Yuan Huang, C. Yang, Xinfeng Xu, W. Xu, Shuwen Liu. Acta Pharmacologica Sinica, 2020

1,963 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Coronavirus disease 2019 is a newly emerging infectious disease currently spreading across the world. It is caused by a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2, which plays a key role in the receptor recognition and cell membrane fusion process, is composed of two subunits, S1 and S2. The S1 subunit contains a receptor-binding domain that recognizes and binds to the host receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, while the S2 subunit mediates viral cell membrane fusion by forming a six-helical bundle via the two-heptad repeat domain. In this review, we highlight recent research advance in the structure, function and development of antivirus drugs targeting the S protein.

Subfields: Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e4f80fbe98d21552b808762956b83f6fd62d9342