Title:The Antiviral and Antimalarial Drug Repurposing in Quest of Chemotherapeutics to Combat COVID-19 Utilizing Structure-Based Molecular Docking
Volume: 24
Issue: 7
Author(s): Sisir Nandi*, Mohit Kumar, Mridula Saxena and Anil Kumar Saxena*
Affiliation:
- Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Global Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Kashipur- 244713,India
- Department of Chemistry, Amity University, Lucknow Campus,India
Keywords:
COVID-19, drug repurposing, structure-based docking, prediction of lead compounds.
Abstract:
Background: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by a new strain
(SARS-CoV-2) that erupted in 2019. Nowadays, it is a great threat that claims uncountable lives
worldwide. There is no specific chemotherapeutics developed yet to combat COVID-19. Therefore,
scientists have been devoted to the quest of the medicine that can cure COVID-19.
Objective: Existing antivirals, such as ASC09/ritonavir, lopinavir/ritonavir with or without umifenovir
in combination with antimalarial chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, have been repurposed to
fight the current coronavirus epidemic. Exact biochemical mechanisms of these drugs towards
COVID-19 have not been discovered to date.
Methods: In-silico molecular docking can predict the mode of binding to sort out the existing chemotherapeutics
having a potential affinity towards inhibition of the COVID-19 target. An attempt
has been made in the present work to carry out docking analyses of 34 drugs, including antivirals
and antimalarials, to explain explicitly the mode of interactions of these ligands towards the
COVID-19protease target.
Results: 13 compounds having good binding affinity have been predicted towards protease binding
inhibition of COVID-19.
Conclusion: Our in silico docking results have been confirmed by current reports from clinical settings
through the citation of suitable experimental in vitro data available in the published literature.
