Targeting Viral Proteins for Restraining SARS-CoV-2: Focusing Lens on Viral Proteins Beyond Spike for Discovering New Drug Targets.

Our comprehensive analysis highlights the rationale and need to focus on non-spike viral proteins that are less mutated but has important functions. Examples of this include: structural proteins (e.g., nucleocapsid protein, envelope protein) and extensively-concerned nonstructural proteins (e.g., NSP3, NSP5, NSP12) as well as the ones with relatively less attention (e.g., NSP1, NSP10, NSP14 and NSP16), for developing novel drugs to overcome resistance of SARS-CoV-2 variants to preexisting vaccines and antibody-based treatments.