Computational analysis by molecular docking of thirty alkaloid compounds from medicinal plants as potent inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 main protease

Abstract 2020 has been highly affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The urgent needs for a potent and effective drug for treatment of this malignance put pressure on researchers and scientists worldwide to develop potential drug or a vaccine to resist SARS-CoV-2. We report in this paper the assessment of the efficiency of thirty alkaloid compounds derived from African medicinal plants against the SARS-CoV-2 main protease through molecular docking and bioinformatics approaches. The results reveal four potential inhibitors (ligands 18, 21, 23 and 24) with the highest binding energies up to 12.26 kcal/mol with good profile of ADMET, as well as fully obey the Lipinski’s rule of five.