Bio-Organic Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, 400085, India.
Homi Bhabha National Institute Anushakti Nagar, Mumbai, 400094, India.
ChemMedChem. 2022 Apr 20;17(8):e202100782. doi: 10.1002/cmdc.202100782. Epub 2022 Feb 17.
The recent emergence of pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 has raised significant global health concerns. More importantly, there is no specific therapeutics currently available to combat against this deadly infection. The enzyme 3-chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CLpro) is known to be essential for viral life cycle as it controls the coronavirus replication. 3CLpro could be a potential drug target as established before in the case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). In the current study, we wanted to explore the potential of fused flavonoids as 3CLpro inhibitors. Fused flavonoids (5a,10a-dihydro-11H-benzofuro[3,2-b]chromene) are unexplored for their potential bioactivities due to their low natural occurrences. Their synthetic congeners are also rare due to unavailability of general synthetic methodology. Here we designed a simple strategy to synthesize 5a,10a-dihydro-11H-benzofuro[3,2-b]chromene skeleton and it's four novel derivatives. Our structural bioinformatics study clearly shows excellent potential of the synthesized compounds in comparison to experimentally validated inhibitor N3. Moreover, in-silico ADMET study displays excellent druggability and extremely low level of toxicity of the synthesized molecules. Further, for better understanding, the molecular dynamic approach was implemented to study the change in dynamicity after the compounds bind to the protein. A detailed investigation through clustering analysis and distance calculation gave us sound comprehensive data about their molecular interaction. In summary, we anticipate that the currently synthesized molecules could not only be a potential set of inhibitors against 3CLpro but also the insights acquired from the current study would be instrumental in further developing novel natural flavonoid based anti-COVID therapeutic spectrums.
最近由严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2 型(SARS-CoV-2)引起的冠状病毒大流行引起了重大的全球健康关注。更重要的是,目前尚无针对这种致命感染的特定治疗方法。已知 3-糜蛋白酶样半胱氨酸蛋白酶(3CLpro)是病毒生命周期所必需的,因为它控制着冠状病毒的复制。3CLpro 可以作为一个潜在的药物靶点,因为之前在严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒(SARS-CoV)和中东呼吸综合征冠状病毒(MERS-CoV)的情况下已经确定了这一点。在本研究中,我们希望探索融合黄酮类化合物作为 3CLpro 抑制剂的潜力。由于其低天然存在,融合黄酮类化合物(5a,10a-二氢-11H-苯并呋喃[3,2-b]色烯)尚未因其潜在的生物活性而得到探索。由于缺乏通用的合成方法,其合成类似物也很少见。在这里,我们设计了一种简单的策略来合成 5a,10a-二氢-11H-苯并呋喃[3,2-b]色烯骨架及其四个新型衍生物。我们的结构生物信息学研究清楚地表明,与经过实验验证的抑制剂 N3 相比,合成化合物具有优异的潜力。此外,在计算机辅助药物设计(ADMET)研究中,显示出合成分子具有极好的成药性和极低的毒性水平。此外,为了更好地理解,我们采用分子动力学方法研究了化合物与蛋白质结合后动态变化。通过聚类分析和距离计算的详细研究为我们提供了关于它们分子相互作用的全面数据。总之,我们预计目前合成的分子不仅可以成为一组针对 3CLpro 的潜在抑制剂,而且从当前研究中获得的见解将有助于进一步开发基于新型天然黄酮类化合物的抗 COVID 治疗谱。