Combined in silico strategy for repurposing DrugBank entries towards introducing potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs

Abstract

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) from China in December 2019 led to the coronavirus disorder 2019 pandemic, which has affected tens of millions of humans worldwide. Various in silico research via bio-cheminformatics methods were performed to examine the efficiency of a range of repurposed approved drugs with a new role as anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs. The current study has been performed to screen the approved drugs in the DrugBank database based on a novel bioinformatics/cheminformatics strategy to repurpose available approved drugs towards introducing them as a possible anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug. As a result, 96 approved drugs with the best docking scores passed through several relevant filters were presented as the candidate drugs with potential novel antiviral activities against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.