Al-Hikmah University Journal

The outbreak of a new coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome– coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a global CoVid-19 pandemic, resulting in millions of infections and deaths around the world. There is currently no drug or vaccine for CoVid-19, but it has been revealed that some commercially available drugs are promising, at least for treating symptoms. Among them is Remdesivir, a drug that once offered hope against Ebola. SARS-CoV-2 is a single –stranded RNA virus – this means that it holds its genetic blueprint in a single strand of RNA. Every time the virus wants to replicate, it has to make a copy of this RNA. Remdesivir prevents this by giving the viral RNA copier (RdRP) fake RNA letters to use. Once SARS-CoV-2 docks on human cells using its spike protein and sneaks in, it can get the cells to make viral proteins based off of that RNA’s instructions. However, human cells don’t have the machinery needed to make copies of RNA from RNA. That task requires an RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase (RdRP) and the human cells only have DNA-dependent DNA Polymerase. Hence, before the virus can replicate, it has to get the human cells to make an RdRP using instructions in the viral genome which then has a daunting task of making sure that all of SARS-COv-2 genome letters are copied accurately each time the virus replicates. Remdesivir, which can block the activity of RdRP therefore becomes a potential therapeutic for COVID-19.