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Updated: Aug 2, 2025

Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship, Activity Prediction, and Molecular Dynamics of Non-nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors
Published on: May 9, 2025
Exploring potential SARS-CoV-2 Mpro non-covalent inhibitors through docking, pharmacophore profile matching,
Yunfan Shi1,2, Liting Dong3, Zhuang Ju3,4
1College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, Sichuan, China. shiyunfan2022@163.com.
Context:
In the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the main protease (Mpro/3CLpro) is significant. It is conserved in a number of novel coronavirus variations, and no known human proteases share its cleavage sites. Therefore, 3CLpro is an ideal target. In the report, we screened five potential inhibitors (1543, 2308, 3717, 5606, and 9000) of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro through a workflow. The calculation of MM-GBSA binding free energy showed that three of the five potential inhibitors (1543, 2308, 5606) had similar inhibitor effects to X77 against Mpro of SARS-CoV-2. In conclusion, the manuscript lays the groundwork for the design of Mpro inhibitors.
Methods:
In the virtual screening phase, we used structure-based virtual screening (Qvina2.1) and ligand-based virtual screening (AncPhore). In the molecular dynamic simulation part, we used the Amber14SB + GAFF force field to perform molecular dynamic simulation of the complex for 100 ns (Gromacs2021.5) and performed MM-GBSA binding free energy calculation according to the simulation trajectory.
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