Government launched Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020

Government of India has launches Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020 (DDH2020), a first of its kind National Initiative for supporting drug discovery process. This Drug Discovery Hackathon is a joint initiative of MHRD’s Innovation Cell (MIC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and supported by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), MyGov as well as private players.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

This Hackathon is first of its kind National initiative for supporting drug discovery process and will see participation from professionals, faculty, researchers and students from varied fields like Computer Science, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Medical Sciences, Basic Sciences and Biotechnology.

The Hackathon consists of challenges that are posted as problem statements and, are based on specific drug discovery topics which, are open to the participants to solve. A total of 29 Problem Statements (PS) have been identified.

MyGov portal is being used and any Indian student can participate.

Professionals and researchers from anywhere in the world can participate.

The Hackathon will have three Tracks. Track 1 will primarily deal with drug design for anti-COVID-19 hit/lead generation: this is done using tools such as molecular modelling, pharmacophore optimization, molecular docking, hit/lead optimization, etc.

Track 2 will deal with designing/optimizing new tools and algorithms which will have an immense impact on expediting the process of in silico drug discovery.

There is also a third track called “Moon shot “which allows for working on problems which are ‘out of the box’ nature.