Synthesis of novel N-acyl hydrazone-oxazole hybrids and docking studies of SARS-CoV-2 main protease

A novel synthetic strategy to obtain acyl hydrazine-oxazole hybrids in three-step reactions in moderate to good yields is reported. The key step reaction consists in a Van Leusen reaction using a bifunctional component of both an aldehyde and a methyl ester functional groups. The target molecules were evaluated via in-silico by molecular docking with the main protease enzyme of SARS-Cov-2, where two acyl hydralazine-oxazoles yielded good predicted free energy values in comparison to the co-crystalized ligand.