Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Various studies exist about the molecular mechanisms of viral infection. However, such information is spread across many publications and it is very time-consuming to integrate, and exploit. We develop CoVex, an interactive online platform for SARS-CoV-2 host interactome exploration and drug (target) identification. CoVex integrates virus-human protein interactions, human protein-protein interactions, and drug-target interactions. It allows visual exploration of the virus-host interactome and implements systems medicine algorithms for network-based prediction of drug candidates. Thus, CoVex is a resource to understand molecular mechanisms of pathogenicity and to prioritize candidate therapeutics. We investigate recent hypotheses on a systems biology level to explore mechanistic virus life cycle drivers, and to extract drug repurposing candidates. CoVex renders COVID-19 drug research systems-medicine-ready by giving the scientific community direct access to network medicine algorithms. It is available at https://exbio.wzw.tum.de/covex/.
Journal article
2020-07-01T00:00:00+00:00
11
Chair of Experimental Bioinformatics, TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, München, Germany.
Humans, Pneumonia, Viral, Coronavirus Infections, Antiviral Agents, Algorithms, Computer Simulation, Internet, Virus Attachment, Drug Repositioning, Pandemics, Protein Interaction Maps, Betacoronavirus, Host Microbial Interactions, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2