Cameroonian medicinal plants as potential candidates of SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic instigated by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which changed the daily train of the world’s population and cause several dead. Despite the significant efforts made in developing vaccines and therapeutic drugs, there is currently no available effective treatment against this new coronavirus infection, hence the need to continue research which is aimed at limiting the progression of this virus. The present study which has as objective to carry out in silico studies on the metabolites of some Cameroonian medicinal plants of the Asteraceae family with a view to propose potential molecules to fight against COVID-19. The selected plants are commonly used to treat respiratory infectious diseases, and for this reason they may contain some constituents which could exhibit an antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2. In this work, a set of 74 naturally occurring compounds are computed with SARS-CoV-2 main protease protein (PDB ID: 6lu7) and spike protein (PDB ID: 6m0j) for their affinity and stability using binding energy analysis and molecular docking. Chrysoeriol-7-O-β-D-glucuronopyranoside (compound 16) has showed promising results including excellent Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME) parameters as well as insignificant toxicity. Finally, the stability of this compound is complex with the two proteins validated through molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, they displayed stable trajectory and molecular properties with consistent interaction profile in molecular dynamics simulations. These findings call for further in vitro and in vivo challenges of phytoconstituents against the COVID-19 as a potential agent to fight the spread of this dramatic pandemic.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• SARS-CoV-2
• Cameroonian medicinal plants
• Asteraceae
• molecular docking
• molecular dynamics
• ADMET

Acknowledgement

We would also like to acknowledge all our colleagues involved in the COVID-19 project from Morocco, Cameron and Algeria for their amazing support, team spirit and valuable input.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interests, financial or otherwise.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are thankful to the “Agence Universitaire de la Francophone (AUF)” for financial support (Reference: AUF-463/2020).