Drug Repurposing and Computational Drug Discovery for Viral Infections and COVID-19

Abstract

Coronavirus that has caused severity in the present-day situation since 2019 has high morbidity and mortality rate leading to the pandemic. The discovery of drug is an emergency criterion in such conditions. However, the discovery of a new drug requires a long period of time and is highly expensive that involves clinical trials which might result in secondary medicine allergies which is not a desired way of treatment. Thus, techniques like repurposing antiviral drugs and implementing them as computational therapies with the combination of multiple drugs that are repurposed to cure COVID. Thus, platform was created to implement a pharmacology-based medicine with hiving multiple drug targets like Favipiravir, Remdesivir, Ribavirin, Arbidol, etc. There are necessary criteria for repurposing drugs: it is required to know sufficient data about the disease, interactions of the molecules in the host, protein-protein interaction of host, and the pathogen. This leads to a better treatment and also sets a platform to know further effects of drug in later stages as it can cause long-term effects. The drugs administered must be capable of inducing molecules like blocker that stops multiplication of virus when entered into human host cells; idol drugs should act as entry blockers to virus and also induce immune system activities like cytokinin release to destroy the virus that has already entered the host. The repurposing and computational drug discovery for any disease is a suitable way to treat it because the effectiveness of the drug, treatment criteria, and cost-effectiveness can be managed when the drug target is already known. This can be attained with efficient data mining and sourcing from which multiple drug targets can be treated with the combination of drugs with lesser or no side effects. In viral infections like COVID-19, repurposing and computational drug discovery are the ideal ways of contribution in the field of pharmacology.