Natural Products as Potential Lead Compounds for Drug Discovery Against SARS-CoV-2

For the past 2 years, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 infection has become a world pandemic, ruining the lives and economies of several nations in the world. This has scaled up research on the virus and the resulting infection with the goal of developing new vaccines and therapies. Natural products are known to be a rich source of lead compounds for drug discovery, including against infectious diseases caused by microbes (viruses, bacteria and fungi). In this review article, we conducted a literature survey aimed at identifying natural products with inhibitory concentrations against the coronaviruses or their target proteins, which lie below 10 µM. This led to the identification of 42 compounds belonging to the alkaloid, flavonoid, terpenoid, phenolic, xanthone and saponin classes. The cut off concentration of 10 µM was to limit the study to the most potent chemical entities, which could be developed into therapies against the viral infection to make a contribution towards limiting the spread of the disease.