IIT BHU to re-purpose approved drugs from DrugBank database

Scientists at IIT (BHU) in Varanasi have begun to identify lead compound(s) from available and approved drugs for fast-track anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug molecules. The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has approved support for the research.

Currently, the available treatments are focused only on symptomatic relief to help the patient overcome the infection.

It is expected that the repurposing of pre-existing drugs to help circumvent both the time and money required to find an effective cure.

The IIT (BHU) researchers are working on developing new drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2 by exploring DrugBank.

DrugBank is a database of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug compounds.

This database will be used for searching drugs 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.

Extensive computational and experimental studies will be carried out to identify an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 main protease.

From the available crystal structure of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease, a structure-based inhibitor design will be done by the researchers.

The researchers will experimentally validate 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.

The study is based on the fact that 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.