Discovery and mechanism of action of Thonzonium bromide from an FDA-approved drug library with potent and broad-spectrum inhibitory activity against main proteases of human coronaviruses

Although the effective drugs or vaccines have been developed to prevent the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), their efficacy may be limited for the viral evolution and immune escape. Thus, it is urgently needed to develop the novel broad-spectrum antiviral agents to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic. The 3C-like protease (3CL(pro)) is a highly conserved cysteine proteinase that plays a pivotal role in processing the viral polyprotein to create non-structural proteins (nsps) for replication and transcription of SARS-CoV-2, making it an attractive antiviral target for developing broad-spectrum antiviral agents against SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we identified Thonzonium bromide as an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 3CL(pro) with an IC(50) value of 2.04 ± 0.25 μM by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based enzymatic inhibition assay from the FDA-approved drug library. Next, we determined the inhibitory activity of Thonzonium bromide analogues against SARS-CoV-2 3CL(pro) and analyzed their structure–activity relationship (SAR). Interestingly, Thonzonium bromide showed better inhibitory activity than other analogues. Further fluorescence quenching assay, enzyme kinetics analysis, circular dichroism (CD) analysis and molecular docking studies showed that Thonzonium bromide inhibited SARS-CoV-2 3CL(pro) activity by firmly occupying the catalytic site and inducing conformational changes of the protease. In addition, Thonzonium bromide didn’t exhibit inhibitory activity on human chymotrypsin C (CTRC) and Dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV), indicating that it had a certain selectivity. Finally, we measured the inhibitory activities of Thonzonium bromide against 3CL(pro) of SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and HCoV-229E and found that it had the broad-spectrum inhibitory activity against the proteases of human coronaviruses. These results provide the possible mechanism of action of Thonzonium bromide, highlighting its potential efficacy against multiple human coronaviruses.