Plant-derived antiviral drugs as novel hepatitis B virus inhibitors: Cell culture and molecular docking study

Parvez, Mohammad K.; Tabish Rehman, Md.; Alam, Perwez; Al-Dosari, Mohammed S.; Alqasoumi, Saleh I.; Alajmi, Mohammed F.

To investigate the anti-HBV potential, the selected compounds were subjected to a time-course (day 1, 3 and 5) study, using HepG2.2.15 cells (Fig. 2) . Notably, prolonged treatment beyond day 5 did not show any significant effect, and further continuation of the culture resulted in cell overgrowth and death . The optimal anti-HBV activities on day 5 post-treatment were: quercetin (68%) > baccatin III (63%) > psoralen (62%) > embelin (58.5%) > menisdaurin (54.5%) > azadirachtin (52.5%) > lupeol (51.5%) > rutin (50%) > b-sitosterol (51.5%) > hesperidin (39.5%) as compared to untreated control. Notably, further treatment with the maximal 50 lg/ml dose did not suppress HBsAg significantly (data not shown). The two compounds, bergenin and naringenin did not show any effect on inhibition of HBsAg, and therefore excluded from further antiviral analysis.