Journal of Clinical Medicine Article A Cell-Based Reporter Assay for Screening Inhibitors of MERS Coronavirus RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase Activity Jung Sun Min 1,2, Geon-Woo Kim 1,2, Sunoh Kwon 1,2,* and Young-Hee Jin 2,3,* 1 Herbal Medicine Research Division, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon 34054, Korea;
[email protected] (J.S.M.);
[email protected] (G.-W.K.) 2 Center for Convergent Research of Emerging Virus Infection, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, Daejeon 34114, Korea 3 KM Application Center, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daegu 41062, Korea * Correspondence:
[email protected] (S.K.);
[email protected] (Y.-H.J.); Tel.: +82-42-868-9675 (S.K.); +82-42-610-8850 (Y.-H.J.) Received: 25 June 2020; Accepted: 20 July 2020; Published: 27 July 2020 Abstract: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are emerging zoonotic diseases caused by coronavirus (CoV) infections. The viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) has been suggested as a valuable target for antiviral therapeutics because the sequence homology of CoV RdRp is highly conserved. We established a cell-based reporter assay for MERS-CoV RdRp activity to test viral polymerase inhibitors. The cell-based reporter system was composed of the bicistronic reporter construct and the MERS-CoV nsp12 plasmid construct. Among the tested nine viral polymerase inhibitors, ribavirin, sofosbuvir, favipiravir, lamivudine, zidovudine, valacyclovir, vidarabine, dasabuvir, and remdesivir, only remdesivir exhibited a dose-dependent inhibition. Meanwhile, the Z-factor and Z0-factor of this assay for screening inhibitors of MERS-CoV RdRp activity were 0.778 and 0.782, respectively.