At IIT Goa, team works to find a cure for Covid-19

PANAJI: A team at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Goa, have initiated a process to find a potential drug against Covid-19.
The IIT Goa team is carrying out the work in collaboration with researchers at the Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA.

The virus that causes Covid-19 and the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 are related to each other genetically, even though the diseases they cause are quite different.
“We are working on a potential drug to make sure that we have multiple drug options for future waves of pandemics because these kind of pandemics can hit in waves,” said Rishikesh Narayan from the School of Chemical and Biological Sciences at IIT Goa.
His team plans to synthesise the newly-designed compounds and then check for their bioactivity against the virus to identify the starting point for potential drug discovery efforts, said Narayan.
“We initiated the drug discovery process after the lockdown started. The biological part of the project will be handled by professors Ritu Aneja and Mukesh Kumar from Georgia State University,” said Narayan.
He said it will take a few years before the drug is ready for use.
“There are pre-clinical studies, then clinical studies, then other phases, which all have a prescribed time in which they have to be completed. These testing and approval process cannot be shortened. The designs of the new small organic molecules being designed at IIT Goa are based on the publicly available biological database curated by the international research community over the last few weeks,” said Narayan.