Giannetti M, Mazzuca C, Ripani G, Palleschi A. Inspection on the Mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 Inhibition by Penciclovir: A Molecular Dynamic Study.
Molecules 2022;
28:molecules28010191. [PMID:
36615385 PMCID:
PMC9821970 DOI:
10.3390/molecules28010191]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/29/2022] [Revised: 12/18/2022] [Accepted: 12/23/2022] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
Abstract
In recent years, humanity has had to face a critical pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2. In the rapid search for effective drugs against this RNA-positive virus, the repurposing of already existing nucleotide/nucleoside analogs able to stop RNA replication by inhibiting the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase enzyme has been evaluated. In this process, a valid contribution has been the use of in silico experiments, which allow for a rapid evaluation of the possible effectiveness of the proposed drugs. Here we propose a molecular dynamic study to provide insight into the inhibition mechanism of Penciclovir, a nucleotide analog on the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase enzyme. Besides the presented results, in this article, for the first time, molecular dynamic simulations have been performed considering not only the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase protein, but also its cofactors (fundamental for RNA replication) and double-strand RNA.
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