Introduction: Viruses are one of the most common causes of respiratory tract infection in humans worldwide. Indeed, the ongoing severe acute viral respiratory diseases are a major threat to global health that highlights the need for effective therapeutics for viral respiratory infections. One of the promising potential targets for antiviral therapy is cellular receptors for viral entry that play a key role in the viral life cycle and pathogenesis. The present study aims to have an overview of viral respiratory receptors and their roles in host range, pathogenesis, and therapeutic targets to fight the disease and save lives.
Methods: This study was a narrative review performed in 2021 to investigate viral respiratory receptors and antiviral therapeutic strategies. We searched six databases including PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Google scholar to determine the related documents on the main objective of the study. In this review, we briefly summarized important respiratory viruses cell receptors including influenza virus, human respiratory syncytial virus, coronavirus, human metapneumovirus, human Parainfluenza virus, human adenovirus, and human rhinovirus and their receptors to introduce the known receptor for each virus and the potential preventives or therapeutics related to these targets.
Results: A review of current studies revealed that virus-receptor interactions are essential for the successful infection of respiratory viruses by invading host cells.
viruses usually use specific cell receptors, however, many of them use common viral receptors such as Heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPG), widely expressed by most cell types, that are broadly used by a range of respiratory viruses, to bind to the cell surface. Designing antiviral compounds to prevent HS binding is one of the targets for the design of future antiviral therapies. Moreover, several viruses like influenza viruses, coronaviruses, and adenoviruses utilize sialic acids as cellular entry receptors. Sialic acid receptors widespread distribute in many different cell types like the entire respiratory tract in animals and humans that play crucial roles in the ability to jump species and adapt to the human host. This information will help to develop more important targeted to prevent viruses cell entry by blocking their receptors.
Conclusion: An in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of viral infection, receptors play an important key in host susceptibility to viruses. Therefore, new antiviral therapeutics are developed by identification of virus interactions with host cells in viral pathogenesis and finding novel anti respiratory virus targets.