Harsh Vardhan, Ramesh Pokhriyal launch 'Drug Discovery Hackathon' to develop anti-Covid drug

Centre on Thursday launched the drug discovery hackathon that is expected to bring together diverse talents to develop a medicine against Covid-19.

The first initiative of its kind, the challenge before researchers, students, faculty members will focus on identifying potential drug molecules that will be tested for efficacy by laboratories affiliated to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

For latest updates on Coronavirus pandemic, click here

“While we pursue clinical trials of few re-purposed drugs for Covid-19 … it is also important that we find other suitable re-purposed drugs and at the same time continue working on new drug discovery to develop specific drugs against Covid-19,” Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said while launching the Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020.

The hackathon is a joint effort of the Innovation Cell of the HRD Ministry, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), CSIR, and supported by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, MyGov, and private players.

“This initiative is open for researchers/faculty across the globe as we are keen on attracting international talent to join and support our efforts,” HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said.

The hackathon consists of challenges that are posted as problem statements based on specific drug discovery topics that are open to participants to solve.

Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths on July 2

It will be held in three phases of three months each and the lead compounds identified at the end of the third phase will be taken forward for the experimental level by the CSIR and other interested organisations.

The hackathon will have three tracks with the first one dealing primarily with drug design for anti-Covid lead generation using tools such as molecular modeling, pharmacophore optimisation, molecular docking and lead optimisation.

The second track will deal with designing new tools and algorithms that can help expedite the process of in-silico drug discovery. The third track would involve out of the box solutions or completely novel and innovative ideas that would be pursued under the ‘moon shot’ approach