RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Discovery of clinically approved drugs capable of inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 in vitro infection using a phenotypic screening strategy and network-analysis to predict their potential to treat covid-19 JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2020.07.09.196337 DO 10.1101/2020.07.09.196337 A1 Douglas Ferreira Sales-Medina A1 Ludmila Rodrigues Pinto Ferreira A1 Lavínia M. D. Romera A1 Karolina Ribeiro Gonçalves A1 Rafael V. C. Guido A1 Gilles Courtemanche A1 Marcos S. Buckeridge A1 Édison L. Durigon A1 Carolina B. Moraes A1 Lucio H. Freitas-Junior YR 2020 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/13/2020.07.09.196337.abstract AB The disease caused by SARS-CoV2, covid-19, rapidly spreads worldwide, causing the greatest threat to global public health in the last 100 years. This scenario has become catastrophic as there are no approved vaccines to prevent the disease, and the main measures to contain the virus transmission are confinement and social distancing. One priority strategy is based on drug repurposing by pursuing antiviral chemotherapy that can control transmission and prevent complications associated with covid-19. With this aim, we performed a high content screening assay for the discovery of anti-SARS-CoV-2 compounds. From the 65 screened compounds, we have found four drugs capable to selectively inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in vitro infection: brequinar, abiraterone acetate, neomycin, and the extract of Hedera helix. Brequinar and abiraterone acetate had higher inhibition potency against SARS-CoV-2 than neomycin and Hedera helix extract, respectively. Drugs with reported antiviral activity and in clinical trials for covid-19, chloroquine, ivermectin, and nitazoxanide, were also included in the screening, and the last two were found to be non-selective. We used a data mining approach to build drug-host molecules-biological function-disease networks to show in a holistic way how each compound is interconnected with host node molecules and virus infection, replication, inflammatory response, and cell apoptosis. In summary, the present manuscript identified four drugs with active inhibition effect on SARS-CoV-2 in vitro infection, and by network analysis, we provided new insights and starting points for the clinical evaluation and repurposing process to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.Summary sentence Discovery of drug repurposing candidates, inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro, using a phenotypic screening strategy and network analysis.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.