IIT Delhi researchers come up with new strategy for development of drug molecule

New Delhi: IIT Delhi researchers have developed and demonstrated a new technique for creating potential drug molecules to treat a variety of diseases.

The researchers utilized organic chemistry and biophysics technologies to create compounds that target protein interfaces, according to the researchers.

"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. Presently, computer-aided rational drug discovery is utilised to find target molecule for a particular protein target. Still, this takes a considerable amount of time," said V Haridas, Professor at IIT Delhi's Chemistry Department.

"The researchers have come up with a chemical strategy based on the macromolecular mimicry. Molecules have shapes just like objects. Designing and synthesizing molecules with diverse shapes is an art in itself. Mimicking (copying) the macromolecular interface by uniquely shaped small molecules is an approach adopted by the research group," he added.

They developed a universal privileged scaffold approach for the design of a variety of inhibitors. The universal scaffold could be converted to 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... We have also patented the JEV inhibitor drug molecule," said Haridas.

Published on: Friday, February 18, 2022, 06:48 PM IST