SARS-CoV-2 3C-Like Protease Antibody #51661

The cause of the COVID-19 pandemic is a novel and highly pathogenic coronavirus, termed SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2). SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the Coronaviridae family of viruses (1). The genome of SARS-CoV-2 is relatively large and encodes up to 29 open reading frames (ORFs). These include ORF1a and ORF1b (further processed into 16 non-structural proteins), 9 accessory proteins, and 4 canonical structural proteins: spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N) (2). SARS-CoV-2 3C-like protease, also known as Main protease (Mpro), is a non-structural protein (Nsp5) that is derived from ORF1a and ORF1b (2). In a sequence of processing events involving another viral protease, Nsp3 (papain-like protease), 3C-like protease is cleaved from pp1a and pp1ab polyproteins. 3C-like protease is a cysteine-like protease that importantly is responsible for all subsequent polyprotein cleavage events that give rise to the components of the viral replicase complex (3). For this reason, inhibitors of 3C-like protease are of interest as antiviral targets (3,4).