Title | Structural analysis of experimental drugs binding to the SARS-CoV-2 target TMPRSS2. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2020 |
Authors | Huggins DJ |
Journal | J Mol Graph Model |
Volume | 100 |
Pagination | 107710 |
Date Published | 2020 11 |
ISSN | 1873-4243 |
Keywords | Amino Acid Sequence, Antiviral Agents, Betacoronavirus, Catalytic Domain, Coronavirus Infections, COVID-19, Drug Repositioning, Host-Pathogen Interactions, Humans, Ligands, Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Pandemics, Plasminogen, Pneumonia, Viral, Protease Inhibitors, Protein Binding, Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs, Protein Structure, Secondary, SARS-CoV-2, Sequence Alignment, Serine Endopeptidases, Small Molecule Libraries, Structural Homology, Protein, Structure-Activity Relationship, Thermodynamics, Urokinase-Type Plasminogen Activator |
Abstract | The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has prompted a worldwide health emergency. There is an urgent need for therapeutics, both through the repurposing of approved drugs and the development of new treatments. In addition to the viral drug targets, a number of human drug targets have been suggested. In theory, targeting human proteins should provide an advantage over targeting viral proteins in terms of drug resistance, which is commonly a problem in treating RNA viruses. This paper focuses on the human protein TMPRSS2, which supports coronavirus life cycles by cleaving viral spike proteins. The three-dimensional structure of TMPRSS2 is not known and so we have generated models of the TMPRSS2 in the apo state as well as in complex with a peptide substrate and putative inhibitors to aid future work. Importantly, many related human proteases have 80% or higher identity with TMPRSS2 in the S1-S1' subsites, with plasminogen and urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) having 95% identity. We highlight 376 approved, investigational or experimental drugs targeting S1A serine proteases that may also inhibit TMPRSS2. Whilst the presence of a relatively uncommon lysine residue in the S2/S3 subsites means that some serine protease inhibitors will not inhibit TMPRSS2, this residue is likely to provide a handle for selective targeting in a focused drug discovery project. We discuss how experimental drugs targeting related serine proteases might be repurposed as TMPRSS2 inhibitors to treat coronaviruses. |
DOI | 10.1016/j.jmgm.2020.107710 |
Alternate Journal | J Mol Graph Model |
PubMed ID | 32829149 |
PubMed Central ID | PMC7417922 |