A review targeting the infection by CHIKV using computational and experimental approaches

Vaccine development for mosquito-borne viral diseases

Mosquito-borne viral diseases are a group of viral illnesses that are predominantly transmitted by mosquitoes, including viruses from the Togaviridae and Flaviviridae families. In recent years, outbreaks caused by Dengue and Zika viruses from the Flaviviridae family, and Chikungunya virus from the Togaviridae family, have raised significant concerns for public health. However, there are currently no safe and effective vaccines available for these viruses, except for CYD-TDV, which has been licensed for Dengue virus. Efforts to control the transmission of COVID-19, such as home quarantine and travel restrictions, have somewhat limited the spread of mosquito-borne viral diseases. Several vaccine platforms, including inactivated vaccines, viral-vector vaccines, live attenuated vaccines, protein vaccines, and nucleic acid vaccines, are being developed to combat these viruses. This review analyzes the various vaccine platforms against Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya viruses and provides valuable insights for responding to potential outbreaks.

In Silico Evaluation of Binding of 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose with Mpro of nCoV to Combat COVID-19

COVID-19 has threatened the existence of humanity andthis infection occurs due to SARS-CoV-2 or novel coronavirus, was first reported in Wuhan, China. Therefore, there is a need to find a promising drug to cure the people suffering from the infection. The second wave of this viral infection was shaking the world in the first half of 2021. Drugs Controllers of India has allowed the emergency use of 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2DG) in 2021 for patients suffering from this viral infection. The potentiality of 2-deoxy-D-glucose to intervene in D-glucose metabolism exists and energy deprivation is an effective parameter to inhibit cancer cell development. Once 2DG arrives in the cells, it becomes phosphorylated to 2-deoxy-D-glucose-6-phosphate (2-DG6P), a charged molecule expressively captured inside the cells. On the other hand, 2DG lacks the ability to convert into fructose-6-phosphate, resulting in a hampering of the activity of both glucose-6-phosphate isomerase and hexokinase, and finally causing cell death. Hence, the potential and effectiveness of 2DG with the main protease (Mpro) of novel coronavirus (nCoV) should be investigated using the molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The ability of 2DG to inhibit the Mpro of nCoV is compared with 2-deoxyglucose (2DAG), an acyclic molecule, and 2-deoxy-D-ribose (2DR). The binding energy of the molecules with the Mpro of nCoV is calculated using molecular docking and superimposed analysis data is obtained. The binding energy of 2DG, 2DR and 2DAG was −2.40, −2.22 and −2.88 kcal/mol respectively. Although the molecular docking does not provide reliable information, therefore, the binding affinity can be confirmed by molecular dynamics simulations. Various trajectories such as Rg, RMSD, RMSF, and hydrogen bonds are obtained from the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. 2DG was found to be a better inhibitor than the 2DAG and 2DR based on the results obtained from the MD simulations at 300 K. Furthermore, temperature-dependent MD simulations of the Mpro of nCoV with promising 2DG was performed at 295, 310 and 315 K, and the effective binding with the Mpro of nCoV occurred at 295 K. With the use of DFT calculations, optimized geometry and localization of electron density of the frontier molecular orbitals were calculated.