Chemical Informatics

Role of QSAR in Filling in the Gaps of CoVID-19 Therapeutics

Background: QSAR modelling has been used extensively as an efficient method in the process of drug development against CoVID-19. The rapid spread and devastating impact of this viral disease across the globe required the speed and versatility of QSAR as a powerful approach for developing potential therapeutics, working upon massive datasets and harnessing collaborations between chemists, medical professionals and biologists.

Methodology: In this letter to the editor, we report examples of how QSAR has been successfully employed in the development of anti CoVID-19 drugs. It provides vital details on drug-target interaction which informs future drug design. Notably, various models in QSAR such as CoMSIA, HiT etc. allow for holistic evaluation, as well as adaptability to peptide-based or nano scale agents.

Conclusion: Challenges associated with vaccines, as well as shortcomings of traditional drug development processes which often take dozens of years, QSAR approach is a quick, data-intensive and effective alternative with promising instances of its application in different combinations.

Author(s): Smriti Sharma*, Yousuf Khan, Kunika Saini and Vinayak Bhatia

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