The prevalence of respiratory illness caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus associated with multiple organ failures is spreading rapidly because of its contagious human-to-human transmission and inadequate globalhealth care systems. Pharmaceutical repurposing, an effective drug development technique using existing drugs, could shorten development time and reduce costs compared to those of de novo drug discovery. We carried out virtual screening of antiviral compounds targeting the spike glycoprotein (S), main protease (M^pro), and the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD)–angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) complex of SARS-CoV-2. PC786, an antiviral polymerase inhibitor, showed enhanced binding affinity to all the targets. Furthermore, the postfusion conformation of the trimeric S protein RBD with ACE2 revealed conformational changes associated with PC786 drug binding. Exploiting immunoinformatics to identify T cell and B cell epitopes could guide future experimental studies with a higher probability of discovering appropriate vaccine candidates with fewer experiments and higher reliability.

The outbreak due to SARS-CoV-2 (or Covid-19) is spreading alarmingly and number of deaths due to infection is aggressively increasing every day. Due to the rapid human to human transmission of Covid-19, we are in need to find a potent drug at the earliest by ruling-out the traditional time-consuming approach of drug development. This is only possible if we use reliable computational approaches for screening compounds from chemical space or by drug repurposing or by finding the phytochemicals and nutraceuticals from plants as they can be immediately used without the need for carrying out drug-trials to test safety and efficacy. A number of plant products were routinely suggested as drugs in traditional Indian and Chinese medicine. Here using molecular docking approach, and combined molecular dynamics and MM-GBSA based free energy calculations approach, we study the potency of the four selected phytochemicals namely andrographolide (AGP1), 14-deoxy 11,12-didehydro andrographolide (AGP2), neoandrographolide (AGP3) and 14-deoxy andrographolide (AGP4) from A. paniculata plant against the four key targets including three non-structural proteins (3 L main protease (3CLpro), Papain-like proteinase (PLpro) and RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRp)) and a structural protein (spike protein (S)) of the virus which are responsible for replication, transcription and host cell recognition. The therapeutic potential of the selected phytochemicals against Covid-19 were also evaluated in comparison with a few commercially available drugs. The binding free energy data suggest that AGP3 could be used as a cost-effective drug-analog for treating covid-19 infection in developing countries. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Thanks to the recently reported cryo-EM structure for the tau fibril (Nature 547, 185-190 (2017)) which is a potential target concerning Alzheimer’s disease, we present the first molecular modeling studies on its interaction with various Positron Emission Tomography (PET) tracers. Experimentally, based on the binding assay studies, at least three different high affinity binding sites have been reported for tracers in the tau fibril. Herein, through integrated modeling using molecular docking, molecular dynamics and binding free energy calculations, we provide insight into the binding patterns of various tracers to the tau fibril. We suggest that there are four different high affinity binding sites available for many of the studied tracers showing varying binding affinity to different binding sites. Thus PBB3 binds most strongly to site-4 and interestingly this site is not a preferable site for any other tracers. For THK5351 our data show that it strongly binds to site-3 and site-1, the former one being more preferable. We also find that MK6240 and T807 bind to site-1 specifically. The modeling data also give some insight into whether a tracer bound to a specific site can be replaced by others or not. For example, the displacement of T807 by PBB3 as reported experimentally can also be explained and attributed to the larger binding affinity of the latter compound in all binding sites. The binding free energy results very well explain the small binding affinity of THK523 compared to all the aryl quinoline moiety containing THK tracers. The ability of certain tau tracers, like FDDNP and THK523, to bind to amyloid fibrils has also been investigated. Further such off-target interaction of tau tracers with amyloid beta fibrils has been validated using a quantum mechanical fragmentation approach.

The paradigm of advanced materials has grown exponentially over the last decade, with their new dimensions including digital design, dynamics, and functions.