ROLE OF AMBROXOL AS A PROPHYLACTIC AGENT AGAINST COVID-19

Azza M. Baraka; Wessam F. El-Hadidy

doi:10.22270/ujpr.v6i1.542

Azza M. Baraka Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University, Egypt.
Wessam F. El-Hadidy Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Medical Research Institute, Alexandria University, Egypt.

10.22270/ujpr.v6i1.542

Keywords:

Ambroxol, Coronavirus disease 2019 “COVID-19”, mucokinetic drug, Type II transmembrane serine protease “TMPRSS2

Abstract

Currently the world is facing a pandemic disease, namely Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As finding recent drugs targeting COVID-19 will take a long time, so repositioning currently existing FDA approved drugs for treating this disastrous disease is an acceptable solution. It has been found that for SARS-CoV-2 to be infective, this necessitates splitting of the viral spike glycoproteins by the serine protease “type II transmembrane serine protease TMPRSS2” that has shown to be widely expressed in pulmonary tissues. Thus, TMPRSS2 is suggested to be potential target for antiviral drug design against COVID-19. The mucokinetic drug “Ambroxol” has been reported as a potent inhibitor of TMPRSS2, thus it could represent a therapeutic as well as a prophylactic candidate against SARS-CoV2. This review gives a brief summary about ambroxol’s potential role against COVID-19’s TMPRSS2.