Contemporary Approaches to the Discovery and Development of Broad-Spectrum Natural Product Prototypes for the Control of Coronaviruses.

Abstract

The pressing need for SARS-CoV-2 controls has led to a reassessment of strategies to identify and develop natural product inhibitors of zoonotic, highly virulent, and rapidly emerging viruses. This review article addresses how contemporary approaches involving computational chemistry, natural product (NP) and protein databases, and mass spectrometry (MS) derived target-ligand interaction analysis can be utilized to expedite the interrogation of NP structures while minimizing the time and expense of extraction, purification, and screening in BioSafety Laboratories (BSL)3 laboratories. The unparalleled structural diversity and complexity of NPs is an extraordinary resource for the discovery and development of broad-spectrum inhibitors of viral genera, including Betacoronavirus, which contains MERS, SARS, SARS-CoV-2, and the common cold. There are two key technological advances that have created unique opportunities for the identification of NP prototypes with greater efficiency: (1) the application of structural databases for NPs and target proteins and (2) the application of modern MS techniques to assess protein-ligand interactions directly from NP extracts. These approaches, developed over years, now allow for the identification and isolation of unique antiviral ligands without the immediate need for BSL3 facilities. Overall, the goal is to improve the success rate of NP-based screening by focusing resources on source materials with a higher likelihood of success, while simultaneously providing opportunities for the discovery of novel ligands to selectively target proteins involved in viral infection.

• Authors: George S Hanna, Yeun-Mun Choo, Ryan Harbit, Heather Paeth, Sarah Wilde, James Mackle, Jacopo-Umberto Verga, Bethany J Wolf, Olivier P Thomas, Peter Croot, James Cray, Courtney Thomas, Ling-Zhi Li, Gary Hardiman, Jin-Feng Hu, Xiaojuan Wang, Dharmeshkumar Patel, Raymond F Schinazi, Barry R O'Keefe, Mark T Hamann
• Journal: Journal of natural products (J Nat Prod) Vol. 84 Issue 11 Pg. 3001-3007 (11 26 2021) ISSN: 1520-6025 [Electronic] United States
• PMID: 34677966 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Antiviral Agents
• Biological Products
• Ligands

Topics

• Antiviral Agents (pharmacology)
• Betacoronavirus (drug effects)
• Biological Products (pharmacology)
• Computational Biology
• Databases, Chemical
• Databases, Protein
• Drug Discovery
• Ligands
• Mass Spectrometry
• Protein Interaction Mapping
• SARS-CoV-2 (drug effects)