Old Drugs for Newly Emerging Viral Disease, COVID-19: Bioinformatic Prospective

Abstract

Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in late 2019 and 2020 comprises a serious and more likely a pandemic threat worldwide. Given that the disease has not approved vaccines or drugs up to now, any efforts for drug design and or clinical trails of old drugs based on their mechanism of action are worthy and creditable in such circumstances. Experienced docking experiments using the newly released coordinate structure for COVID-19 protease as a receptor and thoughtfully selected chemicals among antiviral and antibiotics drugs as ligands may be leading in this context. We selected nine drugs from HIV-1 protease inhibitors and twenty-one candidates from anti bronchitis drugs based on their chemical structures and enrolled them in blind and active site-directed dockings in different modes and in native-like conditions of interactions. Our findings suggest the binding capacity and the inhibitory potency of candidates are as follows Tipranavir>Indinavir>Atazanavir>Darunavir>Ritonavir>Amprenavir for HIV-1 protease inhibitors and Cefditoren>Cefixime>Erythromycin>Clarithromycin for anti bronchitis medicines. The drugs bioavailability, their hydrophobicity and the hydrophobic properties of their binding sites and also the rates of their metabolisms and deactivations in the human body are the next determinants for their overall effects on viral infections, the net results that should survey by clinical trials to assess their therapeutic usefulness for coronavirus infections.