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The novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, has quickly spread across the world and pose serious threat to public health because it can infect people very easily. The major clinical symptoms of 2019-nCoV infection include fever, dry cough, myalgia, fatigue, and diarrhea. The 2019-nCoV belongs to the betacoronavirus family, and gene sequencing results demonstrate that it is a single-stranded RNA virus, closely related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV). It has been observed that the virus invades human body mainly through binding to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors similar to SARS-CoV and the main protease (Mpro) acts as a critical protease for digesting the polyprotein into functional polypeptides during the replication and transcription process of 2019-nCoV. In this review, we summarized the real-time information of 2019-nCoV treatment methods and mainly focused on the chemical drugs including lopinavir/ritonavir, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, arbidol, remdesivir, favipiravir and other potential innovative active molecules. Their potential targets, activity, clinical status and side effects are described. In addition, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) and biological reagents available, as well as the promising vaccine candidates against 2019-nCoV are also discussed.

Peptides and proteins are involved in almost all biological events. In this review, three chemical biology tools, which were developed for peptide/protein sciences from a viewpoint of peptide/amide bond cleavage, are overviewed. First, study on an artificial amino acid that enables stimulus-responsive functional control of peptides/proteins is briefly described. Two N–S acyl transfer reaction-based tools, one a linker molecule for facile identification of target proteins of bioactive compounds and the other a reagent for selective labeling of proteins of interest, are then discussed.