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Current treatment options involve repeated mass drug administrations, which have been met with several challenges despite some successes. Administration of doxycycline, an anti-Wolbachia agent, has shown clinical effectiveness but has several limitations, including long treatment durations and contraindications. We describe the use of an in silico drug repurposing approach to screening a library of over 3200 FDA-approved medications against the filarial endosymbiont,<jats:italic>Wolbachia<\/jats:italic>. We target the enzyme which catalyzes the first step of heme biosynthesis in the<jats:italic>Wolbachia<\/jats:italic>. This presents an opportunity to inhibit heme synthesis, which leads to depriving the filarial worm of heme, resulting in a subsequent macrofilaricidal effect. High throughput virtual screening, molecular docking and molecular simulations with binding energy calculations led to the identification of paritaprevir and nilotinib as potential anti-Wolbachia agents. Having higher binding affinities to the catalytic pocket than the natural substrate, these drugs have the structural potential to bind and engage active site residues of the<jats:italic>wolbachia<\/jats:italic>5\u2032-Aminolevulinic Acid Synthase. We hereby propose paritaprevir and nilotinib for experimental validations as anti-Wolbachia agents.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-021-87976-4","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,19]],"date-time":"2021-04-19T10:10:06Z","timestamp":1618827006000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":8,"title":["In silico drug repurposing for filarial infection predicts nilotinib and paritaprevir as potential inhibitors of the Wolbachia 5\u2032-aminolevulinic acid synthase"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"11","author":[{"given":"Alexander","family":"Kwarteng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ebenezer","family":"Asiedu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Augustina","family":"Sylverken","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Amma","family":"Larbi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yusif","family":"Mubarik","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Charles","family":"Apprey","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"87976_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e1186","DOI":"10.1016\/S2214-109X(20)30286-2","volume":"8","author":"A Deshpande","year":"2020","unstructured":"Deshpande, A. et al. 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