CNS-safe flavone analogues as dual SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors: An integrated in-silico design study
Oussama Khibech , Mohammed Ouachekradi , Mohammed Merzouki , Abdessamad Benabbou , Said Abadi , Yasser Karzazi , Boufelja Bouammalli , Allal Challioui
ChemPhysMater ›› 2026, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (2) : 212 -231.
Because SARS-CoV-2 infection can provoke neurological complications, prospective antivirals must combine high viral potency with central-nervous-system (CNS) safety. Seven flavone-derived analogues (M1–M7) were therefore evaluated with a fully in-silico workflow that linked ADME filtering, ProTox-III neuro-toxicity prediction, multi-target docking (main protease Mpro: 7RN1, 9ARQ, 9ART; ACE2: 7UFL), density functional theory (DFT) and 100 ns atomistic molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations. SwissADME and ADMETlab 3 indicated full compliance with Lipinski, Veber and Ghose rules, balanced polarity-lipophilicity and predicted human intestinal absorption of 2%–28%, while all analogues remained outside blood-brain-barrier risk space. ProTox-III placed the series in GHS hazard class 5 (LD5 n ≈2500–4000 mg kg−1) with ≥ 84% probability of neuro-inactivity. Docking returned mean binding energies of −7.0 kcal mol−1 for Mpro and −7.5 kcal mol−1 for ACE2; M6 ranked first for Mpro through hydrogen bonds to CYS145 and GLN189, whereas M4 and M7 favoured ACE2 via a GLN98/TYR196 network. Redocking reproduced co-crystal poses with RMSD ≤ 1.52 Å, validating the protocol. MD confirmed stability: M6-Mpro and M4-ACE2 plateaued at ligand RMSD ≤ 0.6 nm and damped catalytic-site RMSF, whereas M7-ACE2 drifted after 70 ns. DFT revealed that M6 possesses the narrowest HOMO-LUMO gap (3.47 eV) and highest electrophilicity ( ω = 7.17 eV), rationalising its reactivity. Convergent evidence identifies M6, M4 and M7 as CNS-safe, drug-like antivirals worthy of experimental validation.
SARS-CoV-2 / Docking / DFT / CNS-safe flavone / Molecular dynamics
| [1] |
|
| [2] |
|
| [3] |
|
| [4] |
|
| [5] |
|
| [6] |
|
| [7] |
|
| [8] |
|
| [9] |
|
| [10] |
|
| [11] |
|
| [12] |
|
| [13] |
|
| [14] |
|
| [15] |
|
| [16] |
|
| [17] |
|
| [18] |
|
| [19] |
|
| [20] |
|
| [21] |
|
| [22] |
|
| [23] |
|
| [24] |
|
| [25] |
|
| [26] |
|
| [27] |
|
| [28] |
|
| [29] |
|
| [30] |
|
| [31] |
|
| [32] |
|
| [33] |
|
| [34] |
|
| [35] |
|
| [36] |
|
| [37] |
|
| [38] |
|
| [39] |
|
| [40] |
|
| [41] |
|
| [42] |
|
| [43] |
|
| [44] |
|
| [45] |
|
| [46] |
|
| [47] |
|
| [48] |
|
| [49] |
|
| [50] |
|
| [51] |
|
| [52] |
|
| [53] |
M. Merzouki, O. Khibech, H. Bouammali, L. El Farh, B. Bouammali, Chromone - thiophene hybrids as non-peptidic inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro: Integrated ADME, docking, and molecular dynamics approach, J. Biochem. Technol. 16 (2025) 1-10, doi: 10.51847/cvcsstDCeK. |
| [54] |
|
| [55] |
|
| [56] |
|
| [57] |
|
| [58] |
|
| [59] |
|
| [60] |
|
| [61] |
|
| [62] |
|
| [63] |
|
| [64] |
|
| [65] |
|
/
| 〈 |
|
〉 |