COVID-19: Physiopathology and Targets for Therapeutic Intervention

Abstract

The pandemic status of COVID-19 was recorded by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. Since then, more than 10 million cases have been confirmed worldwide, with more than 500,000 reported deaths. Throughout this period, efforts by the global scientific community have focused on understanding the disease process and searching on preventive (e.g. vaccines) or therapeutic (e.g. drugs) alternatives of treatment for COVID-19. The present review portrays the historical aspects associated with the discovery of SARS-CoV-2, the etiological agent of COVID-19, describes the pathophysiological aspects of the disease, the viral replication process and discusses the main molecular targets subject to therapeutic intervention, aiming the design, discovery and development of new drugs to treat COVID-19.