New Delhi

Achieving a new feat, a research group of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has designed and demonstrated a new strategy for developing potential drug molecules for treatment of various diseases.

The group is led by Professor V Haridas from the Department of Chemistry. 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 stated. They have utilized tools of Organic Chemistry and Biophysics to design molecules that target protein interface. They have also adopted the macromolecular mimicry approach, that mimics the molecular interface using uniquely shaped small molecules.

They have 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.The researchers say that the new drug designing strategy demonstrated by them could also be adopted to treat retroviral infections.