• Yanfang Xian, Juan Zhang, Zhaoxiang Bian, Hua Zhou, Zhenbiao Zhang, Zhixiu Lin, and Hongxi Xu.
• School of Chinese Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
• Acta Pharm Sin B. 2020 Jul 1; 10 (7): 1163-1174.

AbstractCoronaviruses (CoVs), a family of enveloped positive-sense RNA viruses, are characterized by club-like spikes that project from their surface, unusually large RNA genome, and unique replication capability. CoVs are known to cause various potentially lethal human respiratory infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and the very recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Unfortunately, neither drug nor vaccine has yet been approved to date to prevent and treat these diseases caused by CoVs. Therefore, effective prevention and treatment medications against human coronavirus are in urgent need. In the past decades, many natural compounds have been reported to possess multiple biological activities, including antiviral properties. In this article, we provided a comprehensive review on the natural compounds that interfere with the life cycles of SARS and MERS, and discussed their potential use for the treatment of COVID-19.© 2020 Chinese Pharmaceutical Association and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.

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