Drug Repurposing Against SARS-CoV-2: Targeting NSP16-NSP10 Interaction

Abstract

Drug repurposing studies played an important role for fighting with the Covid-19 pandemic. Discovering a new drug molecule for a disease takes a very long time. However, repurposing a drug molecule developed for another disease can accelerate to find new treatments for a disease. Thus, several drug repurposing studies were carried out targeting important proteins for SARS-CoV-2. In this work, Nsp16-Nsp10 interaction was targeted since this interaction is needed for SARS-CoV-2 to evade the human immune system. Therefore, docking calculations of approved 2126 drug molecules obtained from Drugbank database were performed using AutoDock VINA program. From these docking calculations, drugs Ledipasvir Elbasvir, Venetoclax, Digitoxin, Irinotecan, Dexamethasone, Acetyldigitoxin, Dactinomycin, Lumacaftor and Simeprevir have the highest docking scores. Important interactions for these drug molecules were presented.