Identifying SARS-CoV-2 Antiviral Compounds by Screening for Small Molecule Inhibitors of Nsp12/7/8 RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase

Autor: Florian Weissmann, Berta Canal, Rachel Ulferts, Mary Wu, Michael Howell, John F.X. Diffley, Lucy S. Drury, Jennifer C. Milligan, Rupert Beale, Jingkun Zeng, Agustina P Bertolin, Viktor Posse
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
0301 basic medicine
viruses
Drug Evaluation
Preclinical

coronavirus
Druggability
Viral Nonstructural Proteins
medicine.disease_cause
RNA-dependent RNA polymerase
Biochemistry
Benzoates
Chemical library
chemistry.chemical_compound
0302 clinical medicine
RNA polymerase
Chlorocebus aethiops
Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer
Research Articles
Coronavirus
chemistry.chemical_classification
Coronavirus RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase
biology
Small molecule
Suramin
Antiviral Agents
Small Molecule Libraries
03 medical and health sciences
Biochemical Techniques & Resources
Virology
medicine
Animals
Molecular Biology
Vero Cells
Enzyme Assays
SARS-CoV-2
Reproducibility of Results
COVID-19
RNA virus
Cell Biology
Bridged Bicyclo Compounds
Heterocyclic

biology.organism_classification
High-Throughput Screening Assays
nsp12
030104 developmental biology
Enzyme
Viral replication
chemistry
Holoenzymes
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Zdroj: Biochemical Journal
DOI: 10.1101/2021.04.07.438807
Popis: SummaryThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has turned into the largest public health and economic crisis in recent history impacting virtually all sectors of society. There is a need for effective therapeutics to battle the ongoing pandemic. Repurposing existing drugs with known pharmacological safety profiles is a fast and cost-effective approach to identify novel treatments. The COVID-19 etiologic agent is the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus. Coronaviruses rely on the enzymatic activity of the replication-transcription complex (RTC) to multiply inside host cells. The RTC core catalytic component is the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) holoenzyme. The RdRp is one of the key druggable targets for CoVs due to its essential role in viral replication, high degree of sequence and structural conservation and the lack of homologs in human cells. Here, we have expressed, purified and biochemically characterised active SARS-CoV-2 RdRp complexes. We developed a novel fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based strand displacement assay for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 RdRp activity suitable for a high-throughput format. As part of a larger research project to identify inhibitors for all the enzymatic activities encoded by SARS-CoV-2, we used this assay to screen a custom chemical library of over 5000 approved and investigational compounds for novel SARS-CoV-2 RdRp inhibitors. We identified 3 novel compounds (GSK-650394, C646 and BH3I-1) and confirmed suramin and suramin-like compounds as in vitro SARS-CoV-2 RdRp activity inhibitors. We also characterised the antiviral efficacy of these drugs in cell-based assays that we developed to monitor SARS-CoV-2 growth.
Databáze: OpenAIRE