• FluTrackers.com Inc. does not provide medical advice. Information on this web site is collected from various internet resources, and the FluTrackers board of directors makes no warranty to the safety, efficacy, correctness or completeness of the information posted on this site by any author or poster. The information collated here is for instructional and/or discussion purposes only and is NOT intended to diagnose or treat any disease, illness, or other medical condition. Every individual reader or poster should seek advice from their personal physician/healthcare practitioner before considering or using any interventions that are discussed on this website. By continuing to access this website you agree to consult your personal physican before using any interventions posted on this website, and you agree to hold harmless FluTrackers.com Inc., the board of directors, the members, and all authors and posters for any effects from use of any medication, supplement, vitamin or other substance, device, intervention, etc. mentioned in posts on this website, or other internet venues referenced in posts on this website.
  • We are not asking for any donations. Do not donate to any entity who says they are raising funds for us.

Arch Med Res . Targeting SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease: A Computational Drug Repurposing Study

tetano

Editor, Senior Moderator
Arch Med Res


. 2020 Sep 17;S0188-4409(20)30957-7.
doi: 10.1016/j.arcmed.2020.09.013. Online ahead of print.
Targeting SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease: A Computational Drug Repurposing Study


Krishnaprasad Baby[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Swastika Maity[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Chetan H Mehta[SUP] 2 [/SUP], Akhil Suresh[SUP] 2 [/SUP], Usha Y Nayak[SUP] 2 [/SUP], Yogendra Nayak[SUP] 3 [/SUP]



Affiliations

Abstract

Background and aims: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) induced Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has currently become pandemic worldwide. Though drugs like remdesivir, favipiravir, and dexamethasone found beneficial for COVID-19 management, they have limitations clinically, and vaccine development takes a long time. The researchers have reported key proteins which could act as druggable targets. Among them, the major protease M[SUP]pro[/SUP] is first published, plays a prominent role in viral replication and an attractive drug-target for drug discovery. Hence, to target M[SUP]pro[/SUP] and inhibit it, we accomplished the virtual screening of US-FDA approved drugs using well-known drug repurposing approach by computer-aided tools.
Methods: The protein M[SUP]pro[/SUP], PDB-ID 6LU7 was imported to Maestro graphical user interphase of Schr?dinger software. The US-FDA approved drug structures are imported from DrugBank and docked after preliminary protein and ligand preparation. The drugs are shortlisted based on the docking scores in the Standard Precision method (SP-docking) and then based on the type of molecular interactions they are studied for molecular dynamics simulations.
Results: The docking and molecular interactions studies, five drugs emerged as potential hits by forming hydrophilic, hydrophobic, electrostatic interactions. The drugs such as arbutin, terbutaline, barnidipine, tipiracil and aprepitant identified as potential hits. Among the drugs, tipiracil and aprepitant interacted with the M[SUP]pro[/SUP] consistently, and they turned out to be most promising.
Conclusions: This study shows the possible exploration for drug repurposing using computer-aided docking tools and the potential roles of tipiracil and aprepitant, which can be explored further in the treatment of COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Docking; In silico; M(pro); Repurposing; SARS-CoV-2.
 
Back
Top Bottom