A COVID-19 drug hackathon in India is inviting students to give it a shot

• To accelerate the process, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) announced a drug hackathon focused on discovering a potential drug to treat coronavirus.
  
• These ideas, presented by both national and international participants, will then be worked on by the CSIR labs, and other organisations under the theme ‘AI Solutions for COVID.’
  
• Meanwhile, a recent study said that natural ingredients like Ashwagandha and Propolis could be the potential anti-COVID drugs.
  
• As many as 86 teams are presently working to come up with a Covid-19 vaccine including those undergoing clinical trials.

Coronavirus infection, which has already cost over 4,500 lives in India, is spreading fast and the world is now waiting with bated breath for a vaccine.

To accelerate the process, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) announced a drug hackathon focused on discovering a potential drug to treat coronavirus.

“AICTE and CSIR have embarked on a drug discovery hackathon — this is a high-end hackathon where students are trained with information on how to do computational drug discovery,” Professor Vijayraghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India said during the daily COVID-19 press briefing today (May 28).

The hackathon will take place on two themes — drug design for anti-Covid-19, lead molecule generation or repurposing, and designing of new tools and algorithms.

These ideas, presented by both national and international participants, will then be worked on by the CSIR labs, and other organisations under the theme ‘AI Solutions for COVID.’


On the other hand, a recent study by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), Japan said that natural ingredients like Ashwagandha and Propolis could be the potential anti-COVID drugs.


Meanwhile, scientists across the globe are now working towards a vaccine faster than ever. As many as 86 teams are presently working to come up with a Covid-19 vaccine including those undergoing clinical trials.

While the doctors are implementing various treatments like blood plasma, anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, researchers say that it will take at least 12 to 18 months to prepare a vaccine to treat Coronavirus. This is because the vaccines have to undergo several clinical trials to be proven safe.

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