MINSK, 7 September (BelTA) – Belarusian State University (BSU) has developed a computer tool to repurpose well-known medicines. The initiative came from researcher of the laboratory of biochemistry of drugs of the Research Institute for Physical and Chemical Problems Yaroslav Faletrov, BelTA learned from the press service of the university.
There is a huge variety of drugs available on the pharmaceutical market today. However, researchers are looking into ways to reuse the existing licensed drugs for new medical indications, instead of developing new medicines. For that purpose researchers broadly use virtual screening method that incorporates docking. It is based on the lock and key theory that assumes that viral and bacterial proteins fit into only specific membrane (cell) proteins. This helps expand the range of medicinal properties of drugs.
“What is unique about the idea of the BSU researcher is that he suggested counterscreening that has never been used before. The program puts one medicine ‘key' into hundreds of protein ‘locks'. This helps conduct an in-depth analysis of a specific medicine, reveal its new properties, efficiency, side effects in relation to a specific disease. Compared with other similar products, the BSU software processes a bigger scope of information and produces detailed results of the findings in a form of a table. It also ensures data confidentiality,” the press service noted.
The first medicine to be tested this way by BSU was Quercetin. The substance was juxtaposed against 550 protein structures of coronaviruses of humans and animals. The test revealed a good compatibility with some viral proteins. This information might be instrumental in developing medicines to treat the coronavirus infection in the future.
There are plans to test other drugs to find out how their act towards all coronavirus proteins. The same is to be done with tuberculosis proteins. In order to improve the tool, software engineers and chemistry students of BSU will be involved. The solution will be incorporated into training programs and can be used while conducting research.