Computational screening for investigating the synergistic regulatory potential of drugs and phytochemicals in combination with 2-deoxy-D-glucose against SARS-CoV-2.

Unlabelled: COVID-19 disease caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. Since then, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has impacted millions of lives worldwide. Various preclinical and clinical trials on the treatment of COVID-19 disease have revealed that the drugs that work in combination are more likely to reduce reinfection and multi-organ failure. Considering the combination drug therapy, herein, we performed a systematic computational study starting with the formation of sixty-two combinations of drugs and phytochemicals with 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG). The top nineteen combinations resulting from Drug-Drug Interaction (DDI) analysis were selected for individual and multiple-ligand-simultaneous docking (MLSD) study with a host target Serine Protease (TMPRSS2; PDB ID: 7MEQ) and two viral targets, Main Protease (3CLpro; PDB ID: 6LU7) and Uridylate-Specific Endoribonuclease (NSP15; PDB ID: 6VWW). We found that the resulting drugs and phytochemicals in combination with 2-DG shows better binding than the individual compounds. We performed the re-docking of the top three drug combinations by utilizing the polypharmacology approach to validate the binding patterns of drug combinations with multiple targets for verifying the best drug combinatorial output obtained by blind docking. A strong binding affinity pattern was observed for 2-DG + Ruxolitinib (NIH-recommended drug), 2-DG + Telmisartan (phase 4 clinical trial drug), and 2-DG + Punicalagin (phytochemical) for all the selected targets. Additionally, we conducted multiple-ligand-simultaneous molecular dynamics (MLS-MD) simulations on the selected targets with the 2-DG + Ruxolitinib combination. The MLS-MD analysis of the drug combinations shows that stabilization of the interaction complexes could have significant inhibition potential against SARS CoV-2. This study provides an insight into developing drug combinations utilizing integrated computational approaches to uncover their potential in synergistic drug therapy.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11224-022-02049-0.