Abstract
In the past years, an emerging coronavirus, namely severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which led to a serious public health crisis and global economic challenges. SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and thus tends to mutate into many new variants. To face the COVID-19 pandemic with the fast-changing variants, it is critical to develop an effective therapeutic system considering the coordination of time, efficacy, and safety. Based on our knowledge, there are four strategies that have been developed for therapy or prevention against COVID-19, including systems that focus on traditional Chinese medicines, chemical drugs, vaccines, and antibodies. Among these, traditional Chinese medicines could be the fastest-developed therapeutic strategy and have shown satisfactory efficacy and safety in the treatment of patients in some studies. The second strategy is based on vaccination, and it has been well recognized that the vaccine approach is the most effective way against COVID-19, and now several vaccines have been applied globally. The third strategy is to develop chemical drugs against COVID-19, and it is a time-consuming approach with a high risk of failure. The fourth strategy of antibody treatment might take a long time to develop, and it is a therapeutic method with high specificity. Overall, this chapter summarizes the current status of therapeutic strategies against COVID-19 and provides a perspective including a future option on therapeutic strategies in this significant field.
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Zhang, HL. (2023). The Recent Development of Therapeutic Strategies Against COVID-19. In: Chen, JT. (eds) Ethnopharmacology and Drug Discovery for COVID-19: Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Agents from Herbal Medicines and Natural Products. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3664-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3664-9_2
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