Discovery of 3-phenyl-1,2,4-oxadiazole derivatives as a new class of SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitors

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive infections and deaths and caused tremendous grief among the people. Although vaccines have played an important role in fighting COVID-19, the situation that the protective effect of current vaccines significantly decreases against mutated strains reminds us of the pressing need for developing effective antiviral therapeutics. The main protease (M(pro)) is a key enzyme for SARS-CoV-2 viral replication and transcription and an attractive target for drug development. In this research, we report a new series of M(pro) inhibitors containing 3-phenyl-1,2,4-oxadiazole. Structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies led to the discovery of the most active compound, 16d, which showed an IC(50) value of 5.27 ± 0.26 μM. Collectively, we obtained a new small molecular inhibitor targeting SARS-CoV-2 M(pro), which contains a new scaffold. This compound could be taken as a lead compound for subsequent drug discovery against SARS-CoV-2.