Synonyms: Lamprene®
clofazimine is an approved drug (FDA (1986))
Compound class:
Synthetic organic
Comment: Clofazimine is a phenazine dye with antimycobacterial properties [3]. It has both antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities. State-dependent block of Kv1.3 channels by clofazimine offers therapeutic potential for selective immunosuppression in the context of autoimmune diseases in which Kv1.3-expressing T cells play a significant role [4].
SARS-CoV-2: A report in Nature has identified that clofazimine has anti-coronavirus activity, and that this is synergistic with the antiviral activity of remdesivir [7]. The drug was found to inhibit viral spike-mediated cell fusion and viral helicase activity in vitro, which translated to reduced pulmonary viral load, gut viral shedding and inflammation in an in vivo infection model. The authors suggest that their data supports the use of clofazimine in an outpatient setting for those infected with SARS-CoV-2, or for hospitalised COVID-19 patients if combined with remdesivir. Based on this evidence it is planned to progress clofazimine + remdesivir directly into Phase 2 clinical trial. A trial of clofazimine + interferon-1β is already underway. Ligand Activity Visualisation ChartsThese are box plot that provide a unique visualisation, summarising all the activity data for a ligand taken from ChEMBL and GtoPdb across multiple targets and species. Click on a plot to see the median, interquartile range, low and high data points. A value of zero indicates that no data are available. A separate chart is created for each target, and where possible the algorithm tries to merge ChEMBL and GtoPdb targets by matching them on name and UniProt accession, for each available species. However, please note that inconsistency in naming of targets may lead to data for the same target being reported across multiple charts. ✖ |
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Bioactivity Comments |
The in vitro EC50 of clofazimine against SARS-CoV-2 is 0.31 μM in Vero E6 cells [7]. The comparable EC50 for MERS-CoV infection is 1.48 μM. Clofazimine reduces infection by SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV in primary human cells and in an animal model. It did not modulate the protease activity of either Mpro or PLpro which are critical for cleaving the viral polypeptide. |
Ligand mentioned in the following text fields |
SLC51 family of steroid-derived molecule transporters overview |