• Simone Ronsisvalle, Federica Panarello, Rosaria Di Mauro, Renato Bernardini, Volti Giovanni Li GL Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, Via S. Sofia 97, 95131 Catania, Italy., and Giuseppina Cantarella.
• Department of Drug Sciences, University of Catania, Viale Andrea Doria, 6 95125 Catania, Italy.
• Curr. Pharm. Des. 2021 Jan 1; 27 (10): 1323-1329.

BackgroundThe evolution of the pandemic has burdened the national healthcare systems worldwide and at present, there is no preferred antiviral treatment for COVID-19. Recently, the SARS-Cov-2 protease structure was released that may be exploited in in-silico studies in order to conduct molecular docking analysis.MethodsIn particular, we compared the binding of twoantimalarial drugs, already in use, (i.e. chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine), which showed some potential clinical effects on COVID-19 patients, using ritonavir, lopinavir and darunavir as positive control tree antiviral recognized compounds.ResultsOur results showed that hydroxychloroquine but not chloroquine exhibited a significant binding activity to the main protease similar to that possessed by protease inhibitors tested for other viral infections.ConclusionOur data suggest that hydroxychloroquine may exert additional direct antiviral activity compared to chloroquine. In the absence of clinical studies comparing the efficacy of these two compounds, hydroxychloroquine may offer additional effects and may be considered as the first choice.Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.

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