Design, Synthesis, Antiviral Evaluation, and Molecular Dynamics Simulation Studies of New Spirocyclic...

The current pandemic threat presented by viral pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) suggests that virus emergence and dissemination are not geographically confined. As a result, the quest for antiviral agents has become critical to control this pandemic. In the current study, we provide a novel family of spirocyclic thiopyrimidinone derivatives whose cytotoxicity and antiviral efficacy were investigated against human coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E) as a model for the Coronaviridae family. We utilized MTT and cytopathic effect (CPE) inhibitory tests on green monkey kidney (vero-E6) cell lines. The new molecules showed varied degrees of antiviral activity against the vero-E6 cell lines with minimal cytotoxicity. With a high level of a selective index (SI=14.8), compound 9 showed outstanding inhibitory ability and could effectively suppress the human coronavirus 229E. Molecular dynamics simulation (MD) studies were performed to measure the interaction and stability of the protein-ligand complex in motion. The MD results for the most active compound 9 explored remarkable interactions with the binding pockets of the main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2 enzyme confirming the results gained from in vitro experiments. ADMET properties were also predicted for all the tested compounds. All these results demonstrated that the novel spirocyclic thiopyrimidinone derivatives would have the potential to be safe, low-cost chemical compounds that might be used as a novel therapeutic option for Coronaviridae viruses like COVID-19.