IIT Roorkee to research on identifying antiviral for treating Covid-19

The objective of the study is to identify antiviral molecules to combat Covid-19 and expedite the process of identification of drugs through an in-silico approach

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee will conduct research on the identification of antiviral to treat Covid-19. This development comes after a proposal led by Professor Pravindra Kumar has been given a go-ahead by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB).

"The study will identify small molecule inhibitors to target key viral replication enzymes- RNA dependent RNA polymerase (nsp12), viral proteases (Mpro and PL2pro) and the Methyltransferase or MTase (nsp14)," an official release said.

"These enzymes are virus-specific that are encoded with genetic material (RNA) of the viral pathogens. Virus-specific protease catalyses the cleavage of specific peptide bonds in viral polyproteins.