Virtual screening of FDA approved drugs against Nsp15 endoribonuclease from SARS CoV-2

This manuscript shows a detailed computational approach of carefully curated drugs that can potentially act against Nsp15, an endoribonuclease necessary for SARS-CoV2 multiplication. In our work, we have considered maximum resources available on Nsp15 including the recent crystal structure solution of the protein. Owing to the increase in demand for a cure for COVID-19, we have attempted to virtually screen an important target of SARS-CoV2 using the pre-existing FDA approved drugs. The main advantage of our work is our multi-step approach in validating our hits. We have performed initial High Throughput Virtual Screening (HTVS) of 2910 drugs. The top 20 hits were subjected to rigorous molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations yielding a final number of 5 potential hits. In this global emergency, we have made a humble yet critical attempt by undertaking this work; we hope that our work once published may be of help in carrying out appropriate wet-lab work.