Insights into the development of effective materials to suppress replication of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

The life cycle of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is the etiologic agent for coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19), has been revealed, and the molecular mechanism of how this virus replicates has been studied. Effective drugs could be designed to target one of the replication processes. This virus, which contains plus-strand RNA as a genome, is characteristic because it synthesizes its genome and other transcripts with minus-strand template RNA. These viral RNAs, including its genome, are transcribed by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). In this article, we discuss whether novel materials from RNA derivatives could be applied to COVID-19 patients to prevent or disturb viral transcription.