9Th Brazilian Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry

The Yellow Fever Virus is an RNA virus member of the Flaviviridae family. Despite of the existence of an effective vaccine, there is no specific treatment for the yellow fever. The reemergence of the virus in Brazil in 2017, put back the yellow fever as a public health concern. The NS2B-NS3 protease complex is responsible for cleavaging of the immature viral polyprotein, therefore, it is an important target for drug discovery. In this work, we performed the cloning, expression and purification of the NS2B-NS3 protease complex of the Brazilian circulating strain of Yellow Fever Virus. The purified protein was crystallized and submitted to x-ray diffraction. The structure was solved by molecular replacement and then refined to a final model at resolution of 2.9 Å. We also stablished an activity assay, that will be important in the following steps where we intend to use the SBDD to perform the inhibitors screening.