Design of novel pyrimidine based remdesivir analogues with dual target specificity for SARS CoV-2: A computational approach

As the world undergone unpreceded time of tragedy with the corona virus, many researchers have raised to showcase their scientific contributions in terms of novel configured anti-viral drugs until now. Herein, we designed pyrimidine based nucleotides and assessed for the binding capability with SARS-CoV-2 viral replication targets of nsp12 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and Mpro main protease. Molecular docking studies showed all the designed compounds to possess good binding affinity, with a few compounds which outperforms the control drug remdesivir GS-5743 and its active form GS-441524. Further molecular dynamics simulation studies confirmed their stability and preservation of the non-covalent interactions. Based on the present findings Ligand2-BzV_0Tyr, ligand3-BzV_0Ura, and ligand5-EeV_0Tyr showed good binding affinity with Mpro, whereas, ligand1-BzV_0Cys and Ligand2-BzV_0Tyr showed good binding affinity with RdRp, thus could act as potential lead compounds against SARS-CoV-2, which needs further validation studies. In particular, Ligand2-BzV_0Tyr could be more beneficial candidate with the dual target specificity for Mpro and RdRp.