Could be right. Studies from two years ago showing ( department of biology Iran no less ) showing of molecular studies HIV medications and Coronavirus .
Just try these HIV-1 drugs on the COVID-19 .. thats if the HIV drug referred is a proteinase inhibitor.
Abstract
Background: The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a life threatening viral infection caused by a positive, single stranded RNA virus from the enveloped coronavirus family. Associated with fever, cough, and respiratory complications, the illness causes more than 15% mortality worldwide. So far, there is no remedy for the illness except supportive treatments. However, the main viral proteinase has recently been regarded as a suitable target for drug design against SARS infection due to its vital role in polyproteins processing necessary for coronavirus reproduction.
Docking experiments: approved inhibitors of HIV-1 protease including tipranavir (TPV), saquinavir (SQV), ritonavir (RTV), nelfinavir (NFV), lopinavir (LPV), indinavir (IDV), darunavir (DAR), atazanavir (ATV), and amprenavir (APV) were constructed and optimized in the ArgusLab software (Figure 2).
Conclusions:
In order to determine the binding energy and fitness of the inhibitors to the enzyme active site and to extract their preferred binding site, we carried out a serial docking experiment as mentioned above, each in triplicate. Our data (Table 1) indicated that binding energies of inhibitors fitness are as follow: LPV > SQV > TPV > RTV > IDV > ATV > DAR > NFV > APV. To extract the binding site residues of each inhibitor, the best corresponding complex was analyzed by Argus-Lab 4.0.1 software and the amino acid content was compared to that of the substrate. The amino acid content similarity of binding sites of each inhibitor to the substrate was calculated and presented in Table 1. As tabulated, given a high similarity between the substrate and the inhibitors’ binding sites, drugs such as LPV, APV, RTV, TPV, and SQV represent the strongest rivals of the polyproteins to bond to the enzyme active site. Therefore, we selected LPV, APV, RTV, TPV, and SQV as potent inhibitors for further experimentation. No significant correlation was found between binding energies (as in Table 1) and molecular weights of inhibitors (data not shown).
The inhibitory potency of HIV 1 protease inhibitors to cronovirus proteinase was as follows: LPV > RTV > APV > TPV > SQV. Lopinavir and Saquinavir were the most and the least powerful inhibitors of cronovirus proteinase, respectively.
