1/31/2021 Frontiers | Plant Products as Inhibitors of Coronavirus 3CL Protease | Pharmacology

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REVIEW ARTICLE
Front. Pharmacol. | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.583387

Plant Products as Inhibitors of Coronavirus 3CL

Protease Provisionally accepted The nal, formatted version of the article will be published soon.  Notify me ()

Banasri Hazra (https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/33773/overview)1, 2*, Anirban Mandal

(https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/533333/overview)3 and Ajeet K. Jha4
1
Pharmaceutical Technology, Jadavpur University, India
2
Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Engineering & Technology, Jadavpur University, India
3
Mrinalini Datta Mahavidyapith, West Bengal State University, India
4
Nepal Agricultural Research Council, Nepal

The recent outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has infected more than 7 million people
worldwide till June 2020, claiming ~0.4 million lives so far, with the numbers still going up in a few
countries. The ongoing pandemic has created an alarming situation due to extensive loss of human lives
and economy, posing enormous threat to global health security. Till date, there are no approved antiviral
drugs or vaccines against COVID-19, although a number of clinical trials are under way to deal with the
highly contagious and fatal infection. The coronaviruses encode a 3-chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease
(3CLpro), also known as viral main protease (Mpro). The functional importance of this proteolytic enzyme
in the viral life cycle makes 3CLpro a promising target for the development of drugs directed against
SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections. To deal with the unforeseen situation, HIV protease
inhibitors (lopinavir / ritonavir) are currently being used for the treatment of COVID-19 with some
success. This underlines the importance of the inhibitory mechanism against 3CL protein in the design of
potent anti-coronavirus drugs in the development pipeline. Plant products, since time immemorial, served
as an indispensable resource for unearthing significant ‘leads’ to novel therapeutic agents. A number of
traditional medicinal plants and plant-derived molecules are capable of inhibiting coronavirus 3CL
protein. For example, plants like Isatis indigotica, Torreya nucifera, Psoralea corylifolia and Rheum
palmatum have exhibited strong anti-3CLpro activities. Again, many phytochemicals, such as bavachinin,
psoralidin, betulinic acid, curcumin, hinokinin, have shown encouraging antiviral activity, and might play
promising roles in discovering drugs against COVID-19 in future. The present review will focus on plant-
derived 3CLpro inhibitors and their proposed mechanism of action, as well as highlight some of the
prospective plant constituents waiting to be evaluated against this protease enzyme.

Keywords: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19);, 3-Chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CLpro);, Main protease (Mpro);, SARS-CoV-2;, Plant products;,
Plant-derived 3CLpro inhibitors

Received: 14 Jul 2020; Accepted: 19 Jan 2021.

Copyright: © 2021 Hazra, Mandal and Jha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the
copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or
reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Prof. Banasri Hazra, Jadavpur University, Pharmaceutical Technology, Kolkata, 700032, West Bengal, India, banasrihazra@yahoo.co.in

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