SARS-CoV-2 NSP13; A Target Enabling Package

To contribute towards the development of novel anti-viral therapeutics targeting the current and future emerging coronavirus threats, the Gileadi lab at the University of Oxford, together with the XChem team at Diamond Light Source, have teamed up to perform a crystallographic fragment screen against SARS-CoV-2 NSP13 helicase.  NSP13 is believed to act in concert with the replication-transcription complex (NSP7/NSP8₂/NSP12), possibly being involved in either disrupting downstream RNA secondary structures or template switching, and plays an essential role in the life cycle of SARS-CoV-2.

This TEP includes expression clones and methods for producing the full length NSP13, and fluorescence-based activity assays suitable for compound screening. We provide a crystallisation system that produces reproducible crystals that diffract to high resolution, and have performed a crystallographic fragment screen revealing 63 fragment hits across 51 datasets. The fragment hits include several hits in pockets predicted to be of functional importance, including the nucleotide and nucleic acid binding sites, opening the way to development of novel antiviral agents.