COVID-CDR: An integrative resource for network-based investigation of COVID-19 combinatorial drug repositioning and mechanism of action

Repurposing of the existing medications has become the mainstream focus of
anti-COVID-19 drug discovery as it offers rapid and cost-effective
solutions for therapeutic development. However, a great effort is still
required to enhance the efficacy of repurposing therapeutic options
through combination therapy, in which promising drugs with varying
mechanisms of action are administered together. Nonetheless, our ability
to identify and validate effective combinations is limited due to the vast
number of possible drug pairs. Yet, there is no
available resource that
can systematically guide to identify or
choose the effective individual drugs or best
possible synergistic drug combinations for the treatment
of SARS-CoV-2 infection. To address this resource gap, we developed a
web-based platform that displays the network-based mechanism of action of
drug combinations, thus simultaneously providing a visual of the cellular
interactome involved in modes of action of the chosen drugs. The platform
allows the freedom to select two or more drug combinations and provides
the options to investigate the network-based efficacy of drug combinations
and understand the similarity score, primary indications, and pairwise
synergistic scores on different cell-lines. In a nutshell, the platform
(accessible via http://vafaeelab.com/COVID19_repositioning.html) is the
first of its type, which provides a systematic approach for pre-clinical
investigation of combination therapy for treating COVID-19 at the
fingertips of the clinicians or researchers.