Article
作者: Lengyel-Zhand, Zsofia ; Rothan, Hussin ; Hurst, Brett ; Polivkova, Jana ; Korczynska, Magdalena ; Eng, Heather ; Zhang, Lei ; Wu, Huixian ; Zhu, Yuao ; Robinson, Matthew C. ; Yurgelonis, Irina ; Foley, Tim ; Rai, Devendra ; Chang, Jeanne S. ; Mashalidis, Ellene ; Behzadi, Amin ; Meredith, Hannah R. ; Balesano, Amanda ; Gao, Liping ; Aschenbrenner, Lisa ; Qi, Wenying ; Ford, Kristen K. ; Garnsey, Michelle R. ; Hao, Li ; Boras, Britton ; Yu, Aijia ; Ephron, Andrew ; Zhang, Jinzhi ; Frick, James M. ; Vargo, Thomas R. ; Kalgutkar, Amit S. ; Cardin, Rhonda ; Patel, Nandini C. ; Rose, Colin R. ; Tillotson, Joseph ; Liu, Yiping ; Sakata, Sylvie K. ; Lee, Alpha A. ; Nguyen, Luong T. ; Gibson, Scott
Vaccines and first-generation antiviral therapeutics have provided important protection against COVID-19 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, there remains a need for additional therapeutic options that provide enhanced efficacy and protection against potential viral resistance. The SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PL
pro
) is one of the two essential cysteine proteases involved in viral replication. While inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease have demonstrated clinical efficacy, known PL
pro
inhibitors have, to date, lacked the inhibitory potency and requisite pharmacokinetics to demonstrate that targeting PL
pro
translates to in vivo efficacy in a preclinical setting. Here, we report the machine learning–driven discovery of potent, selective, and orally available SARS-CoV-2 PL
pro
inhibitors, with lead compound PF-07957472 (
4
) providing robust efficacy in a mouse-adapted model of COVID-19 infection.