Synthesis, spectral characterization, crystal structure and computational investigation of 2-formyl-6-methoxy-3-carbethoxy quinoline as potential SARS-CoV inhibitor

The recent COVID-19 outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has an immense impact on global health and economy. Although vaccines are being used, urgent need of drugs based on natural products with high efficacy and safety is a pressing priority. Quinoline alkaloids are well known for their therapeutic action against malaria; initially, it was tried against Coronaviruses. It is a basic vital scaffold to design drugs with required biological and pharmacological activities. In this present study, a new quinoline compound was synthesized and characterized by spectroscopy techniques. Crystal structure was established by SCXRD analysis and data is used as an input to perform various computations. Additionally, using state-of-the-art quantum computational techniques, the geometry optimization and calculation of UV–Vis spectrum of 2F6M3CQ were performed at B3LYP/6-311G* level of theory. The optimized molecular geometric parameters as well as UV–Vis spectrum values are found to be in good agreement with their respective experimental results. The visualization of 3-D plots of FMO and MEP indicated the structure and reactivity trends of 2F6M3CQ molecule. Molecular docking methods were utilized to find the drug ability of 2F6M3CQ with M(pro)protein of SARS-CoV-2. There were many intermolecular interactions between M(pro) protein and 2F6M3CQ molecule which lead to good binding energy (−5.5 kcal/mol) between them which was found to be better than the binding energy of chloroquinine molecule (−4.5 kcal/mol) as studied under same docking protocols. Finally, drug likeness and ADME properties of 2F6M3CQ were also analyzed. There is no violation found for RO5 in our 2F6M3CQ compound. ADME analysis shows drug like properties of compound 2F6M3CQ which predicts that it might be a potential candidate for inhibition of SARS-CoV-2.