Design, synthesis, antiviral activity, and mechanisms of novel ferulic acid derivatives containing amide moiety

[Display omitted] •Twenty-nine novel ferulic acid derivatives were gradually designed and synthesized based on activity tracking.•Compound Y2 exhibited outstanding antivirial activities to TSWV and CMV.•Compound Y2 exhibited excellent binding affinity with TSWV coat protein. To explore the novel compounds with high antiviral activity, three series ferulic acid derivatives containing amide moiety were gradually designed and synthesized based on antiviral activity tracking. The bioassay results exhibited that some target compounds had notable antiviral activities against tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) and cucumber mosaic virus (CMV). Compounds Y1, Y2, Y8, Z1 and Z2 presented splendid curative, protective, and inactivating activities to TSWV and CMV at 500 μg/mL. Especially, these compounds displayed outstanding inactivating effects on TSWV with the EC50 values of 225.9, 126.1, 224.6, 216.1, and 147.3 μg/mL, which were superior to ningnanmycin (249.1 μg/mL) and ribavirin (315.7 μg/mL). Furthermore, the antiviral mechanisms of compound Y2 were investigated by conducting microscale thermophoresis experiment and molecular docking experiment. The results suggested that compound Y2 performed excellent binding affinity to TSWV coat protein (TSWV CP) with the binding constant of 2.14 μM, which due to two strong hydrogen bonds of compound Y2 to the key amino acids ARG94 of TSWV CP. Therefore, compound Y2 can be regarded as a leading structure for development of the potential antiviral agent.