https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6234-5934
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Abstract
Despite a huge effort by the scientific community to determine the animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, which led to the identification of several SARS-CoV-2-related viruses both in bats and in pangolins, the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still not clear. Recently, Temmam et al. reported the discovery of bat coronaviruses with a high degree of genome similarity with SARS-CoV-2, especially concerning the RBDs of the S protein, which mediates the capability of such viruses to enter and therefore infect human cells through a hACE2-dependent pathway. These viruses, especially the one named BANAL-236, showed a higher affinity for the hACE2 compared to the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. In the present work, we analyse the similarities and differences between the 3CL protease (main protease, Mpro) of these newly reported viruses and SARS-CoV-2, discussing their relevance relative to the efficacy of existing therapeutic approaches against COVID-19, particularly concerning the recently approved orally available Paxlovid, and the development of future ones.
Acknowledgements
MMS lab is very grateful to Chemical Computing Group, OpenEye, and Acellera for the scientific and technical partnership. MMS lab gratefully acknowledges the support of NVIDIA Corporation with the donation of the Titan V GPU, used for this research. This scientific work has been financially supported by Fondazione Cariparo (An Integrated Strategy for the Fast Discovery of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease (Mpro) Inhibitors, No. 55812).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).