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 .