Front Cover: Structure‐Activity Relationships of Benzamides and Isoindolines Designed as SARS‐CoV Protease Inhibitors Effective against SARS‐CoV‐2 (2/2021)

Structure‐Activity Relationships of Benzamides and Isoindolines Designed as SARS‐CoV Protease Inhibitors Effective against SARS‐CoV‐2

Abstract Inhibition of coronavirus (CoV)‐encoded papain‐like cysteine proteases (PLpro) represents an attractive strategy to treat infections by these important human pathogens. Herein we report on structure‐activity relationships (SAR) of the noncovalent active‐site directed inhibitor (R)‐5‐amino‐2‐methyl‐N‐(1‐(naphthalen‐1‐yl)ethyl) benzamide (2 b), which is known to bind into the S3 and S4 pockets of the SARS‐CoV PLpro. Moreover, we report the discovery of isoindolines as a new class of potent PLpro inhibitors. The studies also provide a deeper understanding of the binding modes of this inhibitor class. Importantly, the inhibitors were also confirmed to inhibit SARS‐CoV‐2 replication in …

Evidence for substrate binding-induced zwitterion formation in the catalytic Cys-His dyad of the SARS-CoV main protease.

The coronavirus main protease (M(pro)) represents an attractive drug target for antiviral therapy of coronavirus (CoV) infections, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The SARS-CoV M(pro) and related CoV proteases have several distinct features, such as an uncharged Cys-His catalytic dyad embedded in a chymotrypsin-like protease fold, that clearly separate these enzymes from archetypical cysteine proteases. To further characterize the catalytic system of CoV main proteases and to obtain information about improved inhibitors, we performed comprehensive simulations of the proton-transfer reactions in the SARS-CoV M(pro) active site that lead to the Cys(-)/His(+) zwitterionic st…