Potential inhibitors for 2019-nCoV coronavirus M protease from clinically approved medicines

Starting from December 2019, a novel coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, was found to cause Severe Acute Respiratory (SARI) symptoms and rapid pandemic in China. With the hope to identify candidate drugs for 2019-nCoV, we adopted a computational approach to screen for available commercial medicines which may function as inhibitors for the M ^pro of 2019-nCoV. Up to 10 commercial medicines that may form hydrogen bounds to key residues within the binding pocket of 2019-nCoV M ^pro were identified, which may have higher mutation tolerance than lopinavir/ritonavir and may also function as inhibitors for other coronaviruses with similar M ^pro binding sites and pocket structures.