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Target identification for repurposed drugs active against SARS-CoV-2 via high-throughput inverse docking
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Target identification for repurposed drugs active against SARS-CoV-2 via high-throughput inverse docking

Sergio R. Ribone, S. Alexis Paz, Cameron F. Abrams and Marcos A. Villarreal
Journal of computer-aided molecular design, v 36(1), pp 25-37
2022
PMID: 34825285
url
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10822-021-00432-3View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze) Open

Abstract

Animal Anatomy Article Chemistry Chemistry and Materials Science Computer Applications in Chemistry Histology Morphology Physical Chemistry
Screening already approved drugs for activity against a novel pathogen can be an important part of global rapid-response strategies in pandemics. Such high-throughput repurposing screens have already identified several existing drugs with potential to combat SARS-CoV-2. However, moving these hits forward for possible development into drugs specifically against this pathogen requires unambiguous identification of their corresponding targets, something the high-throughput screens are not typically designed to reveal. We present here a new computational inverse-docking protocol that uses all-atom protein structures and a combination of docking methods to rank-order targets for each of several existing drugs for which a plurality of recent high-throughput screens detected anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity. We demonstrate validation of this method with known drug-target pairs, including both non-antiviral and antiviral compounds. We subjected 152 distinct drugs potentially suitable for repurposing to the inverse docking procedure. The most common preferential targets were the human enzymes TMPRSS2 and PIKfyve, followed by the viral enzymes Helicase and PLpro. All compounds that selected TMPRSS2 are known serine protease inhibitors, and those that selected PIKfyve are known tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Detailed structural analysis of the docking poses revealed important insights into why these selections arose, and could potentially lead to more rational design of new drugs against these targets.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Biophysics
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
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