Therapeutic effect of certain Indian medicinal compounds against the Corona Virus: An in-silico study

Abstract

Introduction: Since Covid-19 has emerged as a pandemic, it has taken innumerable lives and caused havoc in the developing as well as developed countries. The health facilities throughout the world have taken a toll and to counter this some immediate alternative measures have to be taken. Utilization of the plant-based products from the Indian traditional medicine can be one such measure. Methods: NCBI, Pubchem and PDB databases were used to obtain the structures of the relevant protein targets and plant-based ligands. Apart from this, softwares such as Open Babel, UCSF Chimera, PatchDock and FireDock were used for the purpose of interconversion of file formats, visualization of the structures and docking respectively. Results: After the screening of 9 plant-based products against the 3 main protein targets (spike protein, hemagglutinin, nucleocapsid) of corona virus we found that glucoraphanin showed the best binding energy against spike protein (-51.44 KJ/mol), alpha amyrin showed the best binding energy against hemagglutinin (-31.76 KJ/mol) and beta-sitosterol showed best binding energy against nucleocapsid (-55.44 KJ/mol). Conclusion: This study would aid in the speedy recovery and better immune response of the corona virus infected patients.