Ankit Kumar Dubey

By Ashok K. Singh, Aakansha Singh and Ankit Kumar Dubey

Target recognition is important for the identification of drugs with a high target specificity and/or for the development of existing drugs that could be replicated for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Since SARS-CoV-2 is a pathogen recently discovered, no specific medicines have been identified or are available at present. The scientific community had proposed list of current drugs with therapeutic potential for COVID-19 on the basis of genomic sequence information coupled with protein structure modeling, posing an effective and productive therapeutic approach for repurposing existing drugs. The possible therapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19 involves a wide range of alternatives, encompassing nucleic acid-based treatments directed at the expression of genes of viruses, cytokine therapy, genetic engineered and vectored antibodies, and different formulations of vaccines. The future prospective in the treatment approaches the exploration of antiviral therapy, such as screening of prevailing molecules or libraries, testing of existing broad-spectrum antiviral medications, modern drug discovery focused on genomic knowledge and biochemical properties of various coronaviruses to create new targeted drugs.

Part of the book: Biotechnology to Combat COVID-19