Most importantly, it did show activity in vitro against the coronaviruses. Earlier it was found that in Vero E6 cells cepharanthine at 10 μg/ml completely inhibited SARS-CoV cytopathic effects . In a recent similar experiment with SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus, the replication was completely inhibited at ~2μg/ml of cepharanthine . Another recent screening study reports that cepharanthine severely reduces N protein expression of SARS-CoV-2, and completely inhibits the virus at ~0.2 μg/ml. This is in line with the report on the effect of cepharanthine on a common cold coronavirus (HCoV-OC43 ), where it suppressed both N and the spike protein expression. Also, the drug was effective on earlier stages of infection, indicating inhibition of the virus entry . The latter fact coincides with the results of our study, since viroporins were found to play a role in the virus entry too . However, docking results of the other study showed that cepharanthine might also bind to the spike protein thereby interfering with its binding to the ACE2 receptor. In addition, cepharantine was also found to dock well with the non-structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2, NSP12-NSP7-NSP8 complex .