Can COVID-19 induce glioma tumorogenesis through binding cell receptors?

Abstract

The outbreak of Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) represents a global threat to the public healthcare. The viral spike (S) glycoprotein is the key molecule for viral entry through interaction with angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor molecules present on the cell membranes. Moreover, it has been established that COVID-19 interacts and infects brain cells in humans via ACE2. Therefore in the light of these known facts we hypothesized that viral S protein molecule may bind to the other overexpressed receptor molecules in glioma cells and may play some role in glioma tumorogenesis. Thus we leverage docking analysis (HEX and Z-DOCK) between viral S protein and epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR), vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR) and hepatocyte growth factor receptors (HGFR/c-MET) to investigate the oncogenic potential of COVID-19. Our findings suggested higher affinity of Viral S protein towards EGFR and VEGFR. Although, the data presented is preliminary and need to be validated further via molecular dynamics studies, however it paves platform to instigate further investigations on this aspect considering the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic in oncogenic perspective.