Title:Structure based Drug Designing Approaches in SARS-CoV-2 Spike Inhibitor
Design
Volume: 22
Issue: 29
Author(s): Anusuya Shanmugam*, Anbazhagan Venkattappan and M. Michael Gromiha*
Affiliation:
- Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering, Vinayaka Mission’s Kirupananda Variyar Engineering College, Vinayaka
Mission’s Research Foundation (Deemed to be University), Salem, 636308, Tamil Nadu, India
- Department of Biotechnology,
Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, Indian Institute of Technology ,Madras, Chennai, 600036, Tamil
Nadu, India
- Department of Biotechnology,
Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, Indian Institute of Technology ,Madras, Chennai, 600036, Tamil
Nadu, India
Keywords:
COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Spike protein, Drug repurposing, Structure based drug designing, Molecular docking.
Abstract: The COVID-19 outbreak and the pandemic situation have hastened the research community
to design a novel drug and vaccine against its causative organism, the SARS-CoV-2. The spike
glycoprotein present on the surface of this pathogenic organism plays an immense role in viral entry
and antigenicity. Hence, it is considered an important drug target in COVID-19 drug design. Several
three-dimensional crystal structures of this SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have been identified and deposited
in the Protein DataBank during the pandemic period. This accelerated the research in computer-
aided drug designing, especially in the field of structure-based drug designing. This review
summarizes various structure-based drug design approaches applied to this SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
and its findings. Specifically, it is focused on different structure-based approaches such as molecular
docking, high-throughput virtual screening, molecular dynamics simulation, drug repurposing,
and target-based pharmacophore modelling and screening. These structural approaches have
been applied to different ligands and datasets such as FDA-approved drugs, small molecular chemical
compounds, chemical libraries, chemical databases, structural analogs, and natural compounds,
which resulted in the prediction of spike inhibitors, spike-ACE-2 interface inhibitors, and allosteric
inhibitors.