Development of a sensitive high-throughput enzymatic assay capable of measuring sub-nanomolar inhibitors of SARS-CoV2 Mpro

The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) is essential for viral replication because it is responsible for the processing of most of the non-structural proteins encoded by the virus. Inhibition of Mpro prevents viral replication and therefore constitutes an attractive antiviral strategy. We set out to develop a high-throughput Mpro enzymatic activity assay using fluorescently labeled peptide substrates. A library of fluorogenic substrates of various lengths, sequences and dye/quencher positions was prepared and tested against full length SARS-CoV-2 Mpro enzyme for optimal activity. The addition of buffers containing strongly hydrated kosmotropic anion salts, such as citrate, from the Hofmeister series significantly boosted the enzyme activity and enhanced the assay detection limit, enabling the ranking of sub-nanomolar inhibitors without relying on the low-throughput Morrison equation method. By comparing cooperativity in citrate or non-citrate buffer while titrating the Mpro enzyme concentration, we found full positive cooperativity of Mpro with citrate buffer at less than one nanomolar (nM), but at a much higher enzyme concentration (∼320 nM) with non-citrate buffer. In addition, using a tight binding Mpro inhibitor, we confirmed there was only one active catalytical site in each Mpro monomer. Since cooperativity requires at least two binding sites, we hypothesized that citrate facilitates dimerization of Mpro at sub-nanomolar concentration as one of the mechanisms enhances Mpro catalytic efficiency. This assay has been used in high-throughput screening and structure activity relationship (SAR) studies to support medicinal chemistry efforts. IC₅₀ values determined in this assay correlates well with EC₅₀ values generated by a SARS-CoV-2 antiviral assay after adjusted for cell penetration.