The upsurge of computational screening studies have focused on discovery of drug candidate for main protease (PDB: 6LU7) of SARS-CoV-2 which is the same as 3-Chymotrypsin-like protease. However, this seem to be a fallacy of hasty generalization or acceptance by the science community.

Present computational studies from my group have ranked main protease (PDB: 6LU7) of SARS-CoV-2 not the best target for therapy.

Both the synthetic and phytochemicals have shown best affinity for Papain-like protease, followed by RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and/or helicase.

Let us discuss the potential of these targets, especially the Papain-like protease, toward drug discovery for COVID-19.