In attempt to improve the biological activity of the well-known drug hydroxychloroquine (HQC), eight derivatives (HQ1-4Py – HQ8-4Py) based on the core of HQC were design and their electronic properties including frontier molecular orbitals, total energy and structural parameters were estimated at semi-empirical PM3 levels. Pharmacological parameters such as physicochemical, pharmacokinetics, drug-likeness and medicinal chemistry friendliness have been evaluated to estimate the drugs similarity.

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... Introducing these moieties affect both electronic and drug likeness properties, HQ5-Py shows promised properties such large Eg and good clogP, The obtained results show that the suggested derivates may represent a potential drug candidate for COVID-19. Keywords: Molecular similarity, COVID-19, Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).