Molecular Modeling Targeting Transmembrane Serine Protease 2 (TMPRSS2) as an Alternative Drug Target Against Coronaviruses

Abstract

Since December 2019, the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by the etiological agent SARS-CoV-2 has been responsible for several cases worldwide, becoming pandemic in March 2020. Pharmaceutical companies and academics have joined their efforts to discover new therapies to control the disease since there are no specific drugs to combat this emerging virus. Thus, several tar-gets have been explored; among them, the transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2) has gained greater interest in the scientific community. In this context, this review will describe the importance of TMPRSS2 protease and the significant advances in virtual screening focused on discovering new inhibitors. In this review, it was observed that molecular modeling methods could be powerful tools in identifying new molecules against SARS-CoV-2. Thus, this review could be used to guide re-searchers worldwide to explore the biological and clinical potential of compounds that could be promising drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2, acting by inhibition of TMPRSS2 protein.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; TMPRSS2; coronaviruses; drug repurposing; structure-based drug discovery; virtual screening.