Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 9, 2025

Pharmacophore Modeling for Targets with Extensive Ligand Libraries: A Case Study on SARS-CoV-2 Mpro
Published on: September 26, 2025
In Silico Drug Repurposing for SARS-CoV-2 Main Proteinase and Spike Proteins
Irene Maffucci1, Alessandro Contini2
1Université de technologie de Compiègne, UPJV, CNRS, Enzyme and Cell Engineering, Centre de recherche Royallieu - CS 60 319 - 60 203 Compiègne Cedex, France.
Abstract:
The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is currently representing a major health and economic threat to humanity. So far, no specific treatment to this viral infection has been developed and the emergency still requires an efficient intervention. In this work, we used virtual screening to facilitate drug repurposing against SARS-CoV-2, targeting viral main proteinase and spike protein with 3000 existing drugs. We used a protocol based on a docking step followed by a short molecular dynamic simulation and rescoring by the Nwat-MMGBSA approach. Our results provide suggestions for prioritizing in vitro and/or in vivo tests of already available compounds.
Related Concept Videos
Structure-Activity Relationships and Drug Design
SAR studies the intricate relationship between a drug's chemical structure and biological activity. It focuses on understanding how modifications to a drug's structure can influence...
Conjugated Proteins
Nucleoproteins are protein complexes that contain nucleic acids, categorized as deoxyribonucleoproteins (DNPs) or ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) respectively. The nucleosome is a typical example of a DNP where nuclear DNA is associated with histone proteins. The major antigen for the Covid-19 virus SARS-CoV is an RNP that is critical...

