Drugs from DrugBank database for treating COVID-19
#GS3 #Science&Technology
The Science and Engineering Research Board has approved support for research at IIT (BHU) Varanasi to identify lead compound(s) from available and approved drugs for fast-track anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug molecule.
- Scientists and healthcare professionals over the world are trying for a cure for the pandemic, which afflicts the world today.
- At present, available treatments are focused only on symptomatic relief to help the patient overcome the infection. Repurposing of pre-existing drugs could help circumvent both the time and money required to find an effective cure.
- The research group is working on developing new drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2 by exploring DrugBank (DrugBank is a database of FDA approved drug compounds.
- This database will be used for searching drug against SARS-CoV-2) database compounds as an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 main protease, a key enzyme required for SARS-CoV-2 assembly and multiplication.
- They will be carrying out extensive computational and experimental studies to identify an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 main protease.
- Taking advantage of available crystal structure of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease, a structure-based inhibitor design will be done by the researchers from the available FDA approved drugs compounds in the DrugBank database.
- Subsequently, experimental validation of the designed inhibitor(s) on recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Mpro Protein will be carried out. Various inhibitor parameters will be calculated to establish the effectiveness of the inhibition of the SARS-CoV-2 Mpro enzyme function.
- As the enzyme SARS-CoV-2 Mpro, is key for processing and polyprotein for virus assembly, the inhibition of this key protein can have an anti-viral effect. As most of DrugBank database compounds are characterized in terms of pharmacokinetics and toxicity, the identified molecule could be brought to the market rapidly.
