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Inhibitory effect of phytochemicals towards SARS-CoV-2 papain like protease (PLpro) proteolytic and deubiquitinase activity
Frontiers in Chemistry
  • Anasha Kawall, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Devin S M Lewis, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Avini Sharma, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Krishna Chavada, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Rahul Deshmukh
  • Srujana Rayalam, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Vicky Mody, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Shashidharamurthy Taval, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2022
Abstract

Recent studies have shown that RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (3CLpro), and papain-like protease (PLpro) are necessary for SARS-CoV-2 replication. Among these three enzymes, PLpro exhibits both proteolytic and deubiquitinase (DUB) activity and is responsible for disrupting the host's innate immune response against SARS-CoV-2. Because of this unique property of PLpro, we investigated the inhibitory effects of phytochemicals on the SARS-CoV-2 PLpro enzyme. Our data indicates that the phytochemicals such as catechin, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), mangiferin, myricetin, rutin, and theaflavin exhibited inhibitory activity with IC50 values of 14.2, 128.4, 95.3, 12.1, and 43.4, and 7.3 μM, respectively, towards PLpro proteolytic activity. However, the IC50 values of quercetin, oleuropein, and γ-mangostin are ambiguous. We observed that EGCG, mangiferin, myricetin, oleuropein, rutin, and theaflavin have also inhibited the DUB activity with IC50 values of 44.7, 104.3, 29.2, 131.5, 61.7, and 13.2 μM, respectively. Mechanistically, the ligand-protein interaction structural modeling suggests that mangiferin, EGCG, theaflavin, and oleuropein shows that these four ligands interact with Glu167, and Tyr268, however mangiferin and oleuropein showed very weak interaction with Glu167 as compared to EGCG, and theaflavin which reflects their low IC50 values for DUB activity. Our data indicate that the phytochemicals mentioned above inhibit the proteolytic and DUB activity of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro, thus preventing viral replication and promoting host innate immune response. However, the therapeutic potential of these phytochemicals needs to be validated by pre-clinical and clinical studies.

PubMed ID
36712981
Comments

This article was published in Frontiers in Chemistry.

The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2022.1100460.

Copyright © 2023 Kawall, Lewis, Sharma, Chavada, Deshmukh, Rayalam, Mody and Taval. CC BY 4.0.

Citation Information
Anasha Kawall, Devin S M Lewis, Avini Sharma, Krishna Chavada, et al.. "Inhibitory effect of phytochemicals towards SARS-CoV-2 papain like protease (PLpro) proteolytic and deubiquitinase activity" Frontiers in Chemistry Vol. 10 (2022) p. 1100460 - 1100460
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/srujana_rayalam/81/