An interdisciplinary research group led by Professor V Haridas from the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, has designed and demonstrated a new strategy for developing potential drug molecules for treatment of various diseases.
Prof Haridas has collaborated with virologist Prof Guruprasad Medigeshi from the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), and biochemist Prof Bishwajit Kundu from the Kusuma School of Biological Sciences, IIT Delhi for the research work.
“Drugs are mostly organic molecules that interact with molecules present in the human body. The molecules in the body are bigger in size and are typically called macromolecules. These molecules are either proteins or nucleic acids,” the researchers said.
Currently, computer-aided rational drug discovery is utilized to find target molecules for a particular protein target. This takes a considerable amount of time, they added.
The researchers have utilized tools of Organic Chemistry and Biophysics to design molecules that target protein interface.
The researchers have adopted the macromolecular mimicry approach which mimics or copies the molecular interface using uniquely shaped small molecules.
They developed a ‘universal privileged scaffold approach' which could be converted to a specific inhibitor for a given Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI), which makes the drug design approach relatively easier.
“We used this strategy to design drug molecules, which could be useful for treatment of Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV), the main cause for viral encephalitis in Southeast Asian countries, and protein aggregation diseases such as Alzheimer's and other related diseases. We have also patented the JEV inhibitor drug molecule,” Prof Haridas, the lead researcher from IIT Delhi explained.
The researchers say the new drug designing strategy demonstrated by them could also be adopted to treat retroviral infections.
