The Rise and Fall of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in COVID Era: A Therapeutic Journey and Synthetic Progress

With no proven therapy against COVID-19, the repurposing of existing drugs is an ongoing exercise. In this context, an antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) received immediate stardom when the US-FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for HCQ against COVID-19 based on the limited clinical study. However, on 17 June 2020, WHO announced the stoppage of the HCQ trial for COVID-19 treatment based on data received from the Solidarity trial and UK's Recovery trials indicating HCQ does not result in the reduction of mortality of hospitalized COVID-19 patients when compared with standard of care. In this context, the present review aims to provide a developmental journey of HCQ including medicinal chemistry highlighting the essential pharmacology and the current studies exploring its effectiveness against COVID-19, and its synthetic advancement.