The U-M Center for Drug Repurposing has built a drug repurposing platform to address Covid19. We have developed several human cell-based SARS-CoV-2 infection models and have screened FDA approved drugs, clinical candidates and some dietary supplements.
Morphological profiling of SARS-CoV-2 infected Huh7 cells (MOI of 0.2 for 48 hrs). A) Clockwise: Representative field with nuclei (cyan), neutral lipids (green), and SARS-CoV-2 N protein (magenta), N protein image in the same area with “fire” false color LUT showing distinct morphologies of infected cells showing small/round cells with a hollow center, cells with protrusions, and large syncytia, CellMask image showing cell boundaries and syncytia formation. B) UMAP embedding and phenotypic clustering of 3 million cells exhibiting viral stain show distinct morphologies, including: small/bright cells (I), cells with protrusions (III), and syncytia (V). C) Comparison of normalized cellular features in infected (brown) and uninfected (blue) cells showing differences in cytoplasmic organization, lipid content/distribution and nuclear texture. All distributions were compared with the Mann-Whitney test and are statistically significant with P<0.0001.