The Antiviral Activity of Andrographolide, the Active Metabolite from Andrographis paniculata (Burm. f.) Wall. ex Nees. against SARS-CoV-2 by Using Bio- and Chemoinformatic Tools

Due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, the virus has been wildly spread throughout the world and the number of infected patients has rapidly increased More importantly, neither the official drug treatment nor the vaccine has been officially offered These have considerably increased the public concerns internationally and nationally Recently, there has been one question raised in the Thai society;“Could a common Thai herbal medicine namely Andrographis paniculata be used against SARS-CoV-2 infection?” It is well-known that the plant has antiviral properties against wild ranges of viruses and the active metabolite is andrographolide To date, there have only been a few studies investigating the anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity from andrographolide To provide a better understanding, this study was conducted by applying the advanced techniques in both computational biology and chemistry to evaluate the anti-SARS-CoV-2 potential of andrographolide In this study, andrographolide was tested against two key enzymes of SAR-CoV-2 namely 3C main proteinase and RNA dependent RNA polymerase The result here indicated that andrographolide could only inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 3C main proteinase as strong as lopinavir (the standard medicine), which has been recommended as the drug of choice to treat SARS-CoV-2 patient © 2020, Walailak University All rights reserved