Anthraquinone Derivatives as an Immune Booster and their Therapeutic Option Against COVID-19

Khanal, Pukar; Patil, B. M.; Chand, Jagdish; Naaz, Yasmin

ABSTRACT: Anthraquinone derivatives are identified for their immune-boosting, anti-inflammatory, and anti-viral efficacy. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate the reported anthraquinone derivatives as immune booster molecules in COVID-19 infection and evaluate their binding affinity with three reported targets of novel coronavirus i.e. 3C-like protease, papain-like protease, and spike protein. The reported anthraquinone derivatives were retrieved from an open-source database and filtered based on a positive druglikeness score. Compounds with positive druglikeness scores were predicted for their targets using DIGEP-Pred and the interaction among modulated proteins was evaluated using STRING. Further, the associated pathways were recorded concerning the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway database. Finally, the docking was performed using autodock4 to identify the binding efficacy of anthraquinone derivatives with 3C-like protease, papain-like protease, and spike protein. After docking the pose of ligand scoring minimum binding energy was chosen to visualize the ligand–protein interaction. Among 101 bioactives, 36 scored positive druglikeness score and regulated multiple pathways concerned with immune modulation and (non-) infectious diseases. Similarly, docking study revealed torososide B to possess the highest binding affinity with papain-like protease and 3C-like protease and 1,3,6-trihydroxy-2-methyl-9,10-anthraquinone-3-O-(6′-O-acetyl)-β-d-xylopyranosyl-(1 → 2)-β-d-glucopyranoside with spike protein. GRAPHIC ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13659-020-00260-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.