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Recently, the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic virus has been spreading throughout the world. Until now, no certified drugs have been discovered to efficiently inhibit the virus. The scientists are struggling to find new safe bioactive inhibitors of this deadly virus. In this study, we aim to find antagonists that may inhibit the activity of the three major viral targets: SARS-CoV-2 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (6LU7), SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (6VYB), and a host target human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor (1R42), which is the entry point for the viral encounter, were studied with the prospects of identifying significant drug candidate(s) against COVID-19 infection. Then, the protein stability produced score of less than 0.6 for all residues of all studied receptors. This confirmed that these receptors are extremely stable proteins, so it is very difficult to unstable the stability of these proteins through utilizing individual drugs. Hence, we studied the combination and tricombination therapy between bioactive compounds which have the best binding affinity and some antiviral drugs like chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, simeprevir, baloxavir, lopinavir, and favipiravir to show the effect of combination and tricombination therapy to disrupt the stability of the three major viral targets that are mentioned previously. Also, ADMET study suggested that most of all studied bioactive compounds are safe and nontoxic compounds. All results confirmed that caulerpin can be utilized as a combination and tricombination therapy along with the studied antiviral drugs for disrupting the stability of the three major viral receptors (6LU7, 6VYB, and 1R42). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aimed at evaluating the inhibitory effect of ten natural bioactive compounds (1–10) as potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2-3CL main protease (PDB ID: 6LU7) and SARS-CoV main proteases (PDB IDs: 2GTB and 3TNT) by molecular docking analysis. The inhibitory effect of all studied compounds was studied with compared to some proposed antiviral drugs which currently used in COVID-19 treatment such as chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, remdesivir, baloxvir, lopinavir, and favipiravir. Homology modeling and sequence alignment was computed to evaluate the similarity between the SARS-CoV-2-3CL main protease and other SARS-CoV receptors. ADMET properties of all studied compounds were computed and reported. Also, molecular dynamic (MD) simulation was performed on the compound which has the highest binding affinity inside 6LU7 obtained from molecular docking analysis to study it is stability inside receptor in explicit water solvent. Based on molecular docking analysis, we found that caulerpin has the highest binding affinity inside all studied receptors compared to other bioactive compounds and studied drugs. Our homology modeling and sequence alignment showed that SARS-CoV main protease (PDB ID: 3TNT) shares high similarity with 3CLpro (96.00%). Also, ADMET properties confirmed that caulerpin obeys Lipinski's rule and passes ADMET property, which make it a promising compound to act as a new safe natural drug against SARS-CoV-2-3CL main protease. Finally, MD simulation confirmed that the complex formed between caulerpin and 3CLpro is stable in water explicit and had no major effect on the flexibility of the protein throughout the simulations and provided a suitable basis for our study. Also, binding free energy between caulerpin and 6LU7 confirmed the efficacy of the caulerpin molecule against SARS-CoV-2 main protease. So, this study suggested that caulerpin could be used as a potential candidate in COVID-19 treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]