Recently, Professor Zifeng Yang and Professor Mark Zanin from the Prevention and Treatment Team of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine of the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, together with Professor Jianxin Chen from South China Agricultural University, Professor Weisan Chen from La Trobe University in Australia, and Dr. Xin Zhao from Guangzhou National Analytical Center of China, etc., published a prospective online review entitled “Chinese Therapeutic Strategy for Fighting COVID-19 and Potential Small-Molecule Inhibitors against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)” on Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (IF=6.205).

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019, the pandemic has spread in more than 200 countries around the world, causing more than 30 million confirmed cases and more than 950,000 deaths, which is an immeasurable loss to the world economy and human health. As COVID-19 is a newly emerging infectious disease, there are currently no specific drugs and vaccines to treat the disease. This paper systematically introduces the basic strategies of the application of Chinese traditional medicine in the treatment of COVID-19 in China, and summarizes the inhibitory activity of 72 small molecule compounds mainly derived from Chinese traditional medicine and natural products on the coronavirus and their anti-COVID-19 potential. It focuses on the summary and analysis of the clinical trial efficacy of Remdesivir, Favipiravir, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine and their prospects in the treatment of COVID-19.

What’s more, this paper analyzes the expected challenges and problems in the application of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of COVID-19, like the animal models for evaluating drug efficacy, clinical research programs, and combined use of anti-inflammatory drugs. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry is a mainstream journal of medicinal chemistry that publishes research on small-molecule chemicals. This paper discusses in detail the application and efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of COVID-19 for the first time in this journal, which has played a positive role in promoting the modernization and internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine.