Drug repurposing and computational modeling for discovery of inhibitors of the main protease (M^pro) of SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT: The main protease (M^pro or 3CL^pro) is a conserved cysteine protease from the coronaviruses and started to be considered an important drug target for developing antivirals, as it produced a deadly outbreak of COVID-19. Herein, we used a combination of drug reposition and computational modeling approaches including molecular docking, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and the calculated binding free energy to evaluate a set of drugs in complex with the M^pro enzyme. Particularly, our results show that darunavir and triptorelin drugs have favorable binding free energy (-63.70 and -77.28 kcal mol^-1, respectively) in complex with the M^pro enzyme. Based on the results, the structural and energetic features that explain why some drugs can be

SUBMITTER: Silva JRA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9036595 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature