Natural and Synthetic Coumarins as Potential Drug Candidates Against SARS-CoV-2/CoViD-19

Iara da Silva Santos; Letícia Oliveira Magalhães; Roberta Katlen Fusco Marra; Camilo Henrique da Silva Lima; Lidilhone Hamerski; Magaly Girão Albuquerque; Bárbara Vasconcellos da Silva

doi:10.2174/0109298673285609231220111556

Natural and Synthetic Coumarins as Potential Drug Candidates Against SARS-CoV-2/CoViD-19

Curr Med Chem. 2024 Jan 11. doi: 10.2174/0109298673285609231220111556. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Iara da Silva Santos¹, Letícia Oliveira Magalhães², Roberta Katlen Fusco Marra², Camilo Henrique da Silva Lima², Lidilhone Hamerski¹, Magaly Girão Albuquerque², Bárbara Vasconcellos da Silva²

Affiliations

¹ Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Pesquisas de Produtos Naturais Walter Mors, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
² Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Química, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

PMID: 38243979
DOI: 10.2174/0109298673285609231220111556

Abstract

COVID-19, an airborne disease caused by a betacoronavirus named SARS-- CoV-2, was officially declared a pandemic in early 2020, resulting in more than 770 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths by September 2023. Although the introduction of vaccines in late 2020 helped reduce the number of deaths, the global effort to fight COVID-19 is far from over. While significant progress has been made in a short period, the fight against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and other potential pandemic threats continues. Like AIDS and hepatitis C epidemics, controlling the spread of COVID-19 will require the development of multiple drugs to weaken the virus's resistance to different drug treatments. Therefore, it is essential to continue developing new drug candidates derived from natural or synthetic small molecules. Coumarins are a promising drug design and development scaffold due to their synthetic versatility and unique physicochemical properties. Numerous examples reported in scientific literature, mainly by in silico prospection, demonstrate their potential contribution to the rapid development of drugs against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and other emergent and reemergent viruses.

Keywords: Coronavirus disease 2019; antiviral drugs; computer simulations; coumarins; cysteine-proteases.; molecular docking; molecular dynamics; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.