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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

A Fluorogenic Peptide Cleavage Assay to Screen for Proteolytic Activity: Applications for coronavirus spike protein activation
Published on: January 9, 2019
Targeting SARS-CoV-2 viral proteases as a therapeutic strategy to treat COVID-19
Varada Anirudhan1, Hyun Lee2, Han Cheng1
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Abstract:
The 21st century has witnessed three outbreaks of coronavirus (CoVs) infections caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, spreads rapidly and since the discovery of the first COVID-19 infection in December 2019, has caused 1.2 million deaths worldwide and 226,777 deaths in the United States alone. The high amino acid similarity between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins supports testing therapeutic molecules that were designed to treat SARS infections during the 2003 epidemic. In this review, we provide information on possible COVID-19 treatment strategies that act via inhibition of the two essential proteins of the virus, 3C-like protease (3CLpro ) or papain-like protease (PLpro ).
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