Drug discovery ‘Hackathon’ launched for COVID-19
By MYBRANDBOOK
To fight against global pandemic, a large number of parallel efforts are being taken in India including, new tests for diagnosing COVID-19 and detecting antibodies, as well as a drug ‘Hackathon’ focused on discovering a potential drug to treat coronavirus.
Dr. Vinod Paul, Member NITI Aayog and Prof. K. Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, summarised activities on COVID-19 related to Science and Technology in the areas of vaccines, drug discovery, diagnostics and testing.
Indian academia and start-ups are working on vaccine candidates in the very strong Indian vaccine industry. On drug discovery, scientific efforts take three approaches. The first is the repurposing of extant drugs to see how effective they are against the virus and in mitigating the consequences of the disease. Second, Phyto-pharmaceuticals and extracts from medicinal plants are being tested.
Finally, using a variety of approaches, new drug discovery including a ‘Hackathon’ for computational drug discovery is being undertaken.
The Hackathon, embarked by AICTE and CSIR, will take place on two themes — drug design for anti-Covid-19, lead molecule generation or repurposing, and designing of new tools and algorithms.
These ideas, presented by both national and international participants, will be possibly adopted by the CSIR labs and other organisations to develop AI solutions for COVID-19.
A conglomeration of research efforts have resulted in new tests and testing kits. These include new tests for detection of the virus and also for antibody detection. The latter are being used for serological studies.
The speed of these developments is made possible by the collaborative efforts of scientists, institutions and science agencies. The regulatory system has also been closely engaged, combining speed with quality.
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