4.2.4. 3 Chymotrypsin- Like Protease (3CLpro)
3CLpro is a main protease involved in the mechanism of viral infection
in the host cell. It is also called Nsp5 and is cleaved from the
polyproteins and then goes on to cleave further to release Nsp4-Nsp16
which is vital for the life cycle of the virus . Due to its role in the
viral mechanism, it would be appropriate to use this as a potential drug
target. Doxycycline, Oxytetracycline, Ledipasvir, Lymecycline, and
Demeclocycline have exhibited a good binding affinity towards this
protease and further studies can be performed to validate their clinical
validity. A comparison between various drug targets of COVID-19 studies
reported in the past 5 years is shown in Figure 3A .