scholarly journals Near-physiological-temperature serial crystallography reveals conformations of SARS-CoV-2 main protease active site for improved drug repurposing

Structure ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serdar Durdagi ◽  
Çağdaş Dağ ◽  
Berna Dogan ◽  
Merve Yigin ◽  
Timucin Avsar ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Yogesh Kumar ◽  
Harvijay Singh

<div>The rapidly enlarging COVID-19 pandemic caused by novel SARS-coronavirus 2 is a global</div><div>public health emergency of unprecedented level. Therefore the need of a drug or vaccine that</div><div>counter SARS-CoV-2 is an utmost requirement at this time. Upon infection the ssRNA genome</div><div>of SARS-CoV-2 is translated into large polyprotein which further processed into different</div><div>nonstructural proteins to form viral replication complex by virtue of virus specific proteases:</div><div>main protease (3-CL protease) and papain protease. This indispensable function of main protease</div><div>in virus replication makes this enzyme a promising target for the development of inhibitors and</div><div>potential treatment therapy for novel coronavirus infection. The recently concluded α-ketoamide</div><div>ligand bound X-ray crystal structure of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro (PDB ID: 6Y2F) from Zhang et al.</div><div>has revealed the potential inhibitor binding mechanism and the determinants responsible for</div><div>involved molecular interactions. Here, we have carried out a virtual screening and molecular</div><div>docking study of FDA approved drugs primarily targeted for other viral infections, to investigate</div><div>their binding affinity in Mpro active site. Virtual screening has identified a number of antiviral</div><div>drugs, top ten of which on the basis of their bending energy score are further examined through </div><div>molecular docking with Mpro. Docking studies revealed that drug Lopinavir-Ritonavir, Tipranavir</div><div>and Raltegravir among others binds in the active site of the protease with similar or higher</div><div>affinity than the crystal bound inhibitor α-ketoamide. However, the in-vitro efficacies of the drug</div><div>molecules tested in this study, further needs to be corroborated by carrying out biochemical and</div><div>structural investigation. Moreover, this study advances the potential use of existing drugs to be</div><div>investigated and used to contain the rapidly expanding SARS-CoV-2 infection.</div>


Author(s):  
Yogesh Kumar ◽  
Harvijay Singh

<div>The rapidly enlarging COVID-19 pandemic caused by novel SARS-coronavirus 2 is a global</div><div>public health emergency of unprecedented level. Therefore the need of a drug or vaccine that</div><div>counter SARS-CoV-2 is an utmost requirement at this time. Upon infection the ssRNA genome</div><div>of SARS-CoV-2 is translated into large polyprotein which further processed into different</div><div>nonstructural proteins to form viral replication complex by virtue of virus specific proteases:</div><div>main protease (3-CL protease) and papain protease. This indispensable function of main protease</div><div>in virus replication makes this enzyme a promising target for the development of inhibitors and</div><div>potential treatment therapy for novel coronavirus infection. The recently concluded α-ketoamide</div><div>ligand bound X-ray crystal structure of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro (PDB ID: 6Y2F) from Zhang et al.</div><div>has revealed the potential inhibitor binding mechanism and the determinants responsible for</div><div>involved molecular interactions. Here, we have carried out a virtual screening and molecular</div><div>docking study of FDA approved drugs primarily targeted for other viral infections, to investigate</div><div>their binding affinity in Mpro active site. Virtual screening has identified a number of antiviral</div><div>drugs, top ten of which on the basis of their bending energy score are further examined through </div><div>molecular docking with Mpro. Docking studies revealed that drug Lopinavir-Ritonavir, Tipranavir</div><div>and Raltegravir among others binds in the active site of the protease with similar or higher</div><div>affinity than the crystal bound inhibitor α-ketoamide. However, the in-vitro efficacies of the drug</div><div>molecules tested in this study, further needs to be corroborated by carrying out biochemical and</div><div>structural investigation. Moreover, this study advances the potential use of existing drugs to be</div><div>investigated and used to contain the rapidly expanding SARS-CoV-2 infection.</div>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziqiao Xu ◽  
Orrette Wauchope ◽  
Aaron T. Frank

Here we report the testing and application of a simple, structure-aware framework to design target-specific screening libraries for drug development. Our approach combines advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) with conventional molecular docking to rapidly explore chemical space conditioned on the unique physiochemical properties of the active site of a biomolecular target. As a proof-of-concept, we used our framework to construct a focused library for cyclin-dependent kinase type-2 (CDK2). We then used it to rapidly generate a library specific to the active site of the main protease (Mpro) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. By comparing approved and experimental drugs to compounds in our library, we also identified six drugs, namely, Naratriptan, Etryptamine, Panobinostat, Procainamide, Sertraline, and Lidamidine, as possible SARS-CoV-2 Mpro targeting compounds and, as such, potential drug repurposing candidates. To complement the open-science COVID-19 drug discovery initiatives, we make our SARS-CoV-2 Mpro library fully accessible to the research community (https://github.com/atfrank/SARS-CoV-2).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serdar Durdagi ◽  
Cagdas Dag ◽  
Berna Dogan ◽  
Merve Yigin ◽  
Timucin Avsar ◽  
...  

AbstractThe COVID19 pandemic has resulted in 25+ million reported infections and nearly 850.000 deaths. Research to identify effective therapies for COVID19 includes: i) designing a vaccine as future protection; ii) structure-based drug design; and iii) identifying existing drugs to repurpose them as effective and immediate treatments. To assist in drug repurposing and design, we determined two apo structures of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus-2 main protease at ambienttemperature by Serial Femtosecond X-ray crystallography. We employed detailed molecular simulations of selected known main protease inhibitors with the structures and compared binding modes and energies. The combined structural biology and molecular modeling studies not only reveal the dynamics of small molecules targeting main protease but will also provide invaluable opportunities for drug repurposing and structure-based drug design studies against SARS-CoV-2.One Sentence SummaryRadiation-damage-free high-resolution SARS-CoV-2 main protease SFX structures obtained at near-physiological-temperature offer invaluable information for immediate drug-repurposing studies for the treatment of COVID19.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shruti Koulgi ◽  
Vinod Jani ◽  
Mallikarjunachari Uppuladinne ◽  
Uddhavesh Sonavane ◽  
Asheet Kumar Nath ◽  
...  

<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has been responsible for several deaths worldwide. The causative agent behind this disease is the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – novel Coronavirus 2 (SARS-nCoV2). SARS-nCoV2 belongs to the category of RNA viruses. The main protease, responsible for the cleavage of the viral polyprotein is considered as one of the hot targets for treating COVID-19. Earlier reports suggest the use of HIV anti-viral drugs for targeting the main protease of SARS-CoV, which caused SARS in the year 2002-03. Hence, drug repurposing approach may prove to be useful in targeting the main protease of SARS-nCoV2. The high-resolution crystal structure of 3CL<sup>pro</sup> (main protease) of SARS-nCoV2 (PDB ID: 6LU7) was used as the target. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved and SWEETLEAD database of drug molecules were screened. The apo form of the main protease was simulated for a cumulative of 150 ns and 10 μs open source simulation data was used, to obtain conformations for ensemble docking. The representative structures for docking were selected using RMSD-based clustering and Markov State Modeling analysis. This ensemble docking approach for main protease helped in exploring the conformational variation in the drug binding site of the main protease leading to efficient binding of more relevant drug molecules. The drugs obtained as best hits from the ensemble docking possessed anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties. Small molecules with these properties may prove to be useful to treat symptoms exhibited in COVID-19. This <i>in-silico</i> ensemble docking approach would support identification of potential candidates for repurposing against COVID-19.</p>


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1004
Author(s):  
Mahmoud A. El Hassab ◽  
Mohamed Fares ◽  
Mohammed K. Abdel-Hamid Amin ◽  
Sara T. Al-Rashood ◽  
Amal Alharbi ◽  
...  

Since December 2019, the world has been facing the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that has infected more than 149 million and killed 3.1 million people by 27 April 2021, according to WHO statistics. Safety measures and precautions taken by many countries seem insufficient, especially with no specific approved drugs against the virus. This has created an urgent need to fast track the development of new medication against the virus in order to alleviate the problem and meet public expectations. The SARS-CoV-2 3CL main protease (Mpro) is one of the most attractive targets in the virus life cycle, which is responsible for the processing of the viral polyprotein and is a key for the ribosomal translation of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. In this work, we targeted this enzyme through a structure-based drug design (SBDD) protocol, which aimed at the design of a new potential inhibitor for Mpro. The protocol involves three major steps: fragment-based drug design (FBDD), covalent docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with the calculation of the designed molecule binding free energy at a high level of theory. The FBDD step identified five molecular fragments, which were linked via a suitable carbon linker, to construct our designed compound RMH148. The mode of binding and initial interactions between RMH148 and the enzyme active site was established in the second step of our protocol via covalent docking. The final step involved the use of MD simulations to test for the stability of the docked RMH148 into the Mpro active site and included precise calculations for potential interactions with active site residues and binding free energies. The results introduced RMH148 as a potential inhibitor for the SARS-CoV-2 Mpro enzyme, which was able to achieve various interactions with the enzyme and forms a highly stable complex at the active site even better than the co-crystalized reference.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nemanja Djokovic ◽  
Dusan Ruzic ◽  
Teodora Djikic ◽  
Sandra Cvijic ◽  
Jelisaveta Ignjatovic ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Milan Sencanski ◽  
Vladimir Perovic ◽  
Snezana Pajovic ◽  
Miroslav Adzic ◽  
Slobodan Paessler ◽  
...  

<p>The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak caused an unprecedented global public health threat, having a high transmission rate with currently no drugs or vaccines approved. An alternative powerful additional approach to counteract COVID-19 is <em>in silico</em> drug repurposing. The SARS-CoV-2 main protease is essential for viral replication and an attractive drug target. In this study, we used the virtual screening (VS) protocol with both long-range and short-range interactions to select candidate SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitors. First, the ISM applied for Small Molecules was used for searching the Drugbank database and further followed by molecular docking. After <em>in silico</em> screening of drug space, we identified 57 drugs as potential SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitors that we propose for further experimental testing.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillem Macip ◽  
Pol Garcia‐Segura ◽  
Júlia Mestres‐Truyol ◽  
Bryan Saldivar‐Espinoza ◽  
María José Ojeda‐Montes ◽  
...  

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