Molecular Docking: A Shortcut to Defeat COVID-19?

The current COVID-19 pandemic created a significant challenge for all human life aspects including the health sector. One of the most important challenges was how to find treatment for the disease. Till now, a long list of pharmaceuticals has been tested; mostly disappointing. However, the virus' incursion continues (1).All the currently available pharmaceuticals used for the treatment of COVID-19 are repurposed ones (2); while, none have been promising yet and emerging drugs are inevitable. Molecular docking is a shortcut to the discovery of emerging repurposed drugs (3). In this issue of the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Anesthesia, Saidijam et al. have proposed three main SARSCoV-2 NTPase/Helicase inhibitors as potential pharmaceuticals for the treatment of COVID-19, using molecular docking and dynamics simulation approach (4). These three phenolic compounds (i.e. amentoflavone, theaflavin 3'-gallate, and procyanidin) have been discovered from a long list of 52 phenolic compounds (mostly flavonoids) using a drug discovery method (i.e. a molecular docking) to analyze their binding affinity to SARS-CoV-2 NTPase/helicase.