BHU team submits idea of using phytochemicals to combat Covid-19

Times News Network
Varanasi: A team of nine researchers led by Prof Parimal Das, coordinator, Centre for Genetic Disorders (CGD), Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) participated in Drug Discovery Hackathon-2020 (DDH 2020) idea submission project contest and submitted their idea successfully.
Prof Das said that this project contest was about establishing the ‘Open Innovation model’ for in silicon drug discovery against SARS-CoV-2. The idea submitted from the team in CGD, BHU was about the potential use of phytochemicals to combat Covid-19.
According to him, around 3,777 phytochemicals were screened from 41 different medicinal plants and then molecular docking was performed on chosen 1,427 compounds to test their ability to interact with SARS-CoV-2 proteins. The team finally concluded that two lead molecules which strongly interact with their active site thereby are predicted to hinder the activity of SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro and ORF8.
He said that these results can be further used towards development of drugs by using appropriate formulations and taken further for clinical use after performing safety trials. Considering the low toxicity, less side effects and bioavailability of these compounds, using these phytochemicals for exclusively targeting the viral proteins can be an excellent strategy towards our crusade against Covid pandemic.
The team included research scholars from CGD Prashant Ranjan, Chandra Devi, Neha Jha, Prashasti Yadav; Dr Garima Jain, Dr Chandana Basu, and Dr. Bhagyalaxmi Mohapatra (associate professor, Department of Zoology) and Dr Vinay Singh (assistant professor, School of Biotechnology).