Letters in Drug Design & Discovery Send Orders for Reprints to reprints@benthamscience.net Letters in Drug Design & Discovery, 2020, 17, 1325-1327 1325 LETTER TO EDITOR Drug Re-purposing from SARS-CoV Led the Identification of Potential Candidate Drug Target and Alternate Drug Molecules Against SARS- CoV-2 PV Parvati Sai Arun 1* , Razak Hussain 2 , Yusuf Akhter 3 , Mandava Venkata Basaveswara Rao 4 , Peru- gu Shyam 5 and Sailu Yellaboina 6 1 Department of Biotechnology, Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, Telangana, India; 2 Department of Botany, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India; 3 Department of Biotechnology, Babasaheb Bhim- rao Ambedkar University, Vidya Vihar, Raebareli Road, Lucknow, India; 4 Department of Chemistry, Krishna Universi- ty, Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India; 5 Department of Biotechnology, National Institute of Technology, Warangal, Telangana, India; 6 Department of Medical Elementology and Toxicology, Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi, India Abstract: Background: SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID19 disease where there are no suitable drugs available. Objective: The objective of the work is to repurpose the drugs prescribed for SARS-CoV as the drugs for the control of SARS-CoV-2. Methods: In this work, we have used homology searches and docking methods for understanding the mechanism of the drugs prescribed for the control of SARS-CoV on SARS-CoV-2. Results: In our analysis, we found that the drugs Benzyl (2-Oxopropyl)carbamate, 2-[(2,4-Dichloro- 5-methyl phenyl)sulfonyl]-1,3-dinitro-5-(trifluoromethyl)benzene, S-[5-(Trifluoromethyl)-4H-1,2,4- triazol-3-YL] 5-(phenylethynyl)furan-2-carbothioate, 4-(Dimethylamino)benzoic acid, which are capable of inhibition of the activity of 3CL Pro and prevent the progression of SARS-CoV. Conclusion: In this letter, we describe the findings of the protein ligand interactions between 3CL Pro of SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 with Benzyl (2-oxopropyl) carbamate. A R T I C L E H I S T O R Y Received: May 22, 2020 Revised: June 22, 2020 Accepted: July 04, 2020 DOI: 10.2174/1570180817999200730190600  Keywords: Drugs, repurposing, SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, 3CL pro , Benzyl(2-oxopropyl) carbamate. 1. INTRODUCTION In December 2019, the Center for Disease Control and prevention of China identified a novel coronavirus infection in its citizens which later spread to many parts of the world. The most adapted methods of controlling the disease spread are through social distancing, isolation of the sick from the healthy, quarantine, providing life support and medication to the ill [1]. The use of antiviral drugs along with the different combinations of HIV proteases inhibitors such as lopinavir and ritonavir (currently under clinical trials) are prescribed for the control of the SARS-CoV-2 [1]. Recent development shows that Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are found to be effective drugs for SARS-CoV-2 [2]. Genome sequenc- ing of the SARS-CoV-2 reveals that there is about 75%-85% similarity in the genomes with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV [3]. In laboratory conditions, it was observed SARS-CoV-2 *Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Biotechnology, Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, Telangana, India;  Tel: +91 7075111851E-mail: arun.uoh@gmail.com infects the HeLa cells as observed in SARS-CoV, which express ACE2 [4]. This observation concludes that SARS- CoV-2 also follows a similar pattern of infection mecha- nisms as of SARS CoV, but with an enhanced ability for further adaptation in humans [4, 5]. As there are many simi- larities found between the SARS CoV and SARS-CoV-2, here the question arises, whether there are any alternate drugs available for the treatment SARS-CoV-2 infection which are found to be potential in the case of SARS-CoV infection. To address the question, in this work, we used in silico approaches and compared the proteomes of SARS- CoV and SARS-CoV-2. It was reported that the 3CL Pro pro- tein of SARS-CoV was a good target for the drugs such as Benzyl (2-Oxopropyl)carbamate, 2-[(2,4-Dichloro-5-methyl phenyl)sulfonyl]-1,3-dinitro-5-(trifluoromethyl)benzene, S- [5-(Trifluoromethyl)-4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-YL] 5-(phenylethy- nyl)furan-2-carbothioate, 4-(Dimethylamino)benzoic acid, which are capable of inhibition of the activity of 3CL Pro and prevent the progression of SARS-CoV. In our analysis, we observed that there is the presence of 3CL Pro like protein in SARS-CoV-2 which is about 96.1% identical and 98.7% 1875-628X/20 $65.00+.00 ©2020 Bentham Science Publishers