Molecular Docking Study of COVID-19 Main Protease with Clinically Approved Drugs

A novel strain of coronavirus, namely, Corona Virus Infection Disease 19 has been identified in Wuhan city of China in December 2019, continues to spread at a rapid rate worldwide. There are no specific therapies available and investigations regarding the treatment of this disease are still lacking. In order to identify a novel potent inhibitor we performed docking studies on the main virus protease with eight drugs belonging to four pharmacological classes: anti-malarial, anti-bacterial, anti-infective and anti-histamine. Among the eight studied compounds, Lymecycline and Mizolastine appear as potential inhibitors of this protease. These two compounds revealed a minimum binding energy of -8.87 and -8.71 Kcal/mol with 168 and 256 binding modes detected in the binding substrate pocket, respectively. Lymecycline and Mizolastine interact with specific residues in substrate binding cavity. Thus, Lymecycline and Mizolastione may serve as a tool to fight COVID-19 disease. However, this data need further in vitro and in vivo evaluation to repurpose these two drugs against COVID-19 disease.