RSC Advances Blog

We are very pleased to introduce Giuseppe Bifulco and Gianluigi Lauro, corresponding authors of the paper ‘Accelerating the repurposing of FDA-approved drugs against coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19)‘. Their article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our November HOT articles. Giuseppe and Gianluigi told us more about the work that went into this article and what they hope to achieve in the future. You can find out more about the authors and their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the authors

Giuseppe Bifulco was born in Naples, Italy, in 1968. In 1996, he obtained his PhD from the University of Naples (Organic Chemistry group of Prof. Minale). He worked as visiting scientist at the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, CA) under the supervision of Prof. W. J. Chazin (1994–1995, 1996, and 1998) and Prof. K. C. Nicolaou (1995, 1996, 1998). From 1997 to 1999 he was a postdoctoral student at the University of Salerno in the group of Prof. Riccio; from 1999 to 2005 he was a Researcher at the University of Salerno, where he focused on the study of natural products, specifically on the structural characterization of the products by using homonuclear and heteronuclear one- and two-dimensional NMR techniques. From 2005 to 2017 he was Associate Professor at the University of Salerno. From 2017, he is Full Professor at the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Salerno. He is involved in different research fields, such as the structural characterization of biologically active natural organic compounds; advanced NMR techniques in organic chemistry; QM calculations for the assignment of the configuration of organic compounds; structural studies on drug–DNA interactions; drug design; development of novel molecular modeling approaches (Inverse Virtual Screening). These research activities have been supported by different research grants (funded by Fondazione AIRC per la Ricerca sul Cancro, Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca, as Principal Investigator). He was awarded in 2004 with the Italian Chemical Society “G.Ciamician” medal, a national prize for researchers.

Gianluigi Lauro graduated at the University of Naples “Federico II”, summa cum laude, in Medicinal Chemistry in 2009. In 2013, he obtained his PhD at the University of Salerno under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Bifulco. In 2012, he worked as visiting scientist at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park under the supervision of Prof. Gianni De Fabritiis, and in 2017 at the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, in the group of Prof. Wen Zhang. He is mainly involved in the development and implementation of the Inverse Virtual Screening computational approach, for the identification of the interacting targets of bioactive compounds, in the discovery of new anti-inflammatory/anticancer agents targeting different proteins (mPGES-1, BRD9), and in the stereostructural determination of organic compounds by quantum mechanical (QM) calculations. Currently, he is Researcher at the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Salerno and Principal Investigator of a research grant funded by Fondazione AIRC per la Ricerca sul Cancro (MFAG 2017).

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
Our work was aimed to highlight whether already approved drugs (thus available on the market) could be used to fight the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that has been plaguing the world in the past year. Italy was one of the countries most affected by the first outbreak this spring and we felt the responsibility, as scientist, to contribute to the research of possible cures.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
We hope that our data can be used by other research groups as starting point to figure out new treatments for this disease. We are very confident about the results achieved and we will keep on working on the matter.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
The gravity and the extent of the pandemic was the main driving force that pushed us to pursue this study. As the disease spread all over the world the necessity for an immediate and effective treatment was a priority; therefore, we thought about testing drugs that already passed all the safety tests and could be used shortly after.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
In our opinion, the key design considerations for this study are: – find a new strategy for fighting SARS-CoV-2; – managing a huge amount of data; – sharing new findings with the scientific community; – contributing to the progress of scientific research.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
Time was definitely our worst enemy. From the technical point of view, managing the amount of data we collected was tricky, but we were rewarded by the good outcome of the study.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
Each data is a small piece of information added to the puzzle of SARS-CoV-2, we are eager to see whether our results will be the starting point for future developments. Scientifically, this pandemic is a precious opportunity for professional growth. Moreover, we will not stop researching new possible strategies to design and select new drug candidates.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
Our main field of research is inflammation and cancer, so we will surely continue on that path. This study, though, provided us a chance to explore new applications of the computational techniques to new purposes and we are enthusiast to work on this parallel.

Accelerating the repurposing of FDA-approved drugs against coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19)
Simona De Vita, Maria Giovanna Chini, Gianluigi Lauro and Giuseppe Bifulco
RSC Adv., 2020,10, 40867-40875
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA09010G, Paper

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We are very pleased to introduce Professor Usama Ramadan Abdelmohsen and Dr Amira R. Khattab, corresponding authors of the paper ‘In silico identification of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein–ACE2 complex inhibitors from eight Tecoma species and cultivars analyzed by LC-MS‘. Their article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our November HOT articles. Usama and Amira told us more about the work that went into this article and what they hope to achieve in the future. You can find out more about the authors and their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the authors

Usama Ramadan Abdelmohsen received his B.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Minia University, Egypt in 2002. He received his Ph.D. with an Egyptian fellowship award from the University of Würzburg, Germany, with his thesis entitled ‘Antimicrobial activities from plant cell cultures and marine sponge-associated actinomycetes’ under the guidance of Professor Ute Hentschel. His academic interests are the isolation and structure elucidation of anti-infective secondary metabolites from marine sources in particular sponge-associated actinomycetes using spectroscopic, genomic, and metabolomic tools to discover new natural products.

Dr. Amira R. Khattab is an associate professor of natural product chemistry, and currently serving as Vice-Dean of Student Affairs and Quality at College of Pharmacy, Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport. Dr. Khattab is a graduate of the Faculty of Pharmacy, Alexandria University, Egypt (2005). She received her MSc degree from Alexandria University, Egypt (2011) and her PhD from Tanta University, Egypt (2015) in natural product chemistry. Her main research interest is the metabolome analysis of phytopharmaceuticals and functional foods aided by modern bioinformatics tools for authentication and quality control.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
Our article has shed the light on the renaissance of the prophylactic potential of natural products against the COVID-19. This is of current interest as SARS-CoV-2 has raised a great public health emergency and that evoked an urgency for developing effective anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
In fact, the proposed drug candidates possess an in silico inhibitory action towards SARS-CoV entry machinery to the host cells which makes them promising drug leads for the prophylaxis against COVID-19.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
Our motivation behind the study is to hopefully aid in the faster development of phytotherapeutics with an added-preventive potential that might help in halting the spread of COVID-19 and in better management of the fatal disease.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
Actually, our main concern in designing the research work plan was to properly inspect and select the phytochemicals that can possibly disrupt binding hotspots at the surface of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the viral spike protein when complexed with hACE2.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
The most challenging part of this work was finding phytoligands that could fit the middle shallow pit of the surface of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of spike protein SARS-CoV-Spike-ACE2 complex, with low affinity for ACE2.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
Surprisingly, we managed to identify one of the Tecoma phytoligands namely succinic acid, decyl-3-oxobut-2-yl ester as being the most promising one because of its comparable binding affinity to hesperidin, which is the only compound reported till now that could target the binding interface between spike protein and e human angiotensin converting enzyme “hACE2”.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
Nature has endowed us with many privileged scaffolds possessing a wide pharmacological spectrum. Hence, we are planning to continue exploring the potential inhibitory action of naturally occurring compounds towards the viral entry machinery through destabilizing the functional SARS-CoV-Spike-ACE2 complex, other than inhibiting hACE2 without having any appreciable affinity for binding to ACE2 due to its well-proven in vivo pulmonary protective role in acute lung injury.

In silico identification of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein–ACE2 complex inhibitors from eight Tecoma species and cultivars analyzed by LC-MS
Seham S. El Hawary, Amira R. Khattab, Hanan S. Marzouk, Amira S. El Senousy, Mariam G. A. Alex, Omar M. Aly, Mohamed Teleb and Usama Ramadan Abdelmohsen
RSC Adv., 2020,10, 43103-43108
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA08997D, Paper

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We are very pleased to introduce Dr Mahmood Ahmed, one of the corresponding authors of the paper ‘Folic acid-sulfonamide conjugates as antibacterial agents: design, synthesis and molecular docking studies‘. His article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our November HOT articles. Mahmood told us more about the work that went into this article and what he hopes to achieve in the future. You can find out more about the author and his article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the author

Mahmood Ahmed received his M.Sc. (2003), M.Phil. (2013) and PhD (2018) degrees in Chemistry from Institute of Chemistry, University of the Punjab, Lahore-Pakistan. Currently he is working in Renacon Pharma Limited as Head Plant Operations. During his doctoral studies, he synthesized curcumin analogs and studied their various biological activities including antimicrobial and enzymatic inhibition. His research interest involve synthesis of novel drug analogs and tested them for various pharmacological properties against different phenotypes of various disease models. His research has resulted in the publication of 77 peer‐reviewed articles over 471 citations and h index = 14 and also he has reviewed 178 research articles for 37 international referred journals.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
By developing new conjugates by different pharmacophores containing pteridine ring and sulfonamides in one structure, we are hoping to obtain new compounds of significant biological activity that might suppress the resistance mechanism of microorganisms.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
Most of the conjugates have shown a similar or higher binding affinity with DHFR enzyme as compared to standard drugs and thus can be used to design better antimicrobial agents. Further molecular docking studies explain that the synthesized compounds are binding at the trimethoprim active site in DHFR the enzyme, which can help designing molecules with increased activity.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
As folic acid (FA) has a pteridine ring and an amino group, its conjugation with the sulfonyl group forms a scaffold containing both pteridine and sulfonamide, which confers better antibacterial activities targeting the anti-folate pathway.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
The compounds containing pyrimidine, pteridine, and azines moieties are good DHFR inhibitors.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
The synthesis of these conjugates and assuring their purity.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
The experimental data is well supported by molecular docking studies.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
The next plan is to do in vivo experiments and perform cytotoxicity activity studies.

Folic acid-sulfonamide conjugates as antibacterial agents: design, synthesis and molecular docking studies
Shabnam Shahzad, Muhammad Abdul Qadir, Mahmood Ahmed, Saghir Ahmad, Muhammad Jadoon Khan, Asad Gulzar and Muhammad Muddassar
RSC Adv., 2020,10, 42983-42992
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA09051D, Paper

Submit to RSC Advances today! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest HOT articles, Reviews, Collections & more by following us on Twitter. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.