Furin and COVID-19: Structure, Function and Chemoinformatic Analysis of Representative Active Site Inhibitors

Furin is involved in the endoproteolytic processing of various protein precursors implicated many diseases such as diabetes, obesity, atherosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and viral infection including COVID-19. Recently, cell entry SARS-CoV-2 was found to require sequential cleavage spike glycoprotein (S protein) at S1/S2 S2? sites. The site (PRRAR) can be cleaved by proprotein convertase furin that facilitates membrane fusion spread. Here we summarized recent findings on S structures, role during infection. We analyzed 12 diverse representative inhibitors using a chemoinformatic approach starting from list 628 compounds downloaded ChEMBL database. Among those, only 76 survived soft rule five filtering step. Structural alerts are present most these molecules while some also predicted act toxicity targets. No clinical trials presently listed ClinicalTrials.gov website regarding small molecule furin.