Repurposing of rutin for the inhibition of norovirus replication.

Drug repurposing is a strategy employed to circumvent some of the bottlenecks involved in drug development, such as the cost and time needed for developing new molecular entities. Noroviruses cause recurrent epidemics and sporadic outbreaks of gastroenteritis associated with significant mortality and economic costs, but no treatment has been approved to date. Herein, a library of molecules previously used in humans was screened to find compounds with anti-noroviral activity. Antiviral testing for four selected compounds against murine norovirus infection revealed that rutin has anti-murine norovirus activity in cell-based assays.