High Throughput Screening (HTS) Methods for Screening of Known Drugs for COVID-19

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV- 2) in late 2019 has triggered an ongoing global pandemic whereby infection may result in a lethal severe pneumonia-like disease designated as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Thus, the repositioning of known drugs can significantly accelerate the development and deployment of therapies for COVID-19.

High throughput screening (HTS) is the use of automated equipment to rapidly test thousands to millions of samples for biological activity at the model organism, cellular, pathway, or molecular level. In its most common form, HTS is an experimental process in which 103–106 small molecule compounds of known structure are screened in parallel. Currently, this technique is being used to screen known compounds in several diseases, including COVID-19. In the current scenario, it is important to focus on the application of high-throughput screening (HTS) in the drug discovery process.

In this chapter, we have covered methods of the high-throughput screen and its use in screening known drugs against infectious diseases like COVID-19. Moreover, the challenges and future of these technologies have been focussed.

Keywords: COVID-19, Drug discovery, High Throughput Screening, SARSCoV- 2.