Page 49 - Drug Discovery and Development: Prospects and Challenges

Drug Discovery and Development: Prospects and Challenges / 39

Certain compounds have been tested to exhibit effective action
’ ’
against COVID-19 in silico, such as 5,7,3 ,4 -Tetrahydroxy-2’-
(3,3-dimethylallyl) isoflavone, myricitrin, methyl rosmarinate,
’ ’ ’
3,5,7,3 ,4 ,5 -hexahydroxy flavanone-3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside, and
’
(2S)-eriodictyol 7-O-(6 -O-galloyl)-β-D-glucopyranoside with a binding
affinity of -29.57, -22.13, -20.62, -19.10, and -19.47, respectively. The
target is the viral 3-chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CL pro )
enzyme that controls the coronavirus replication and is essential for its
life cycle. The 3CL pro is a potential drug discovery target in Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) as well as Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) (Tahir et al., 2020).
In vitro and in vivo testing is also important to transform these potential
inhibitors into clinical drugs.
Realising the absence of an effective pharmacological intervention
to cure COVID-19 infection, achieving herd immunity from mass
vaccination becomes an effective strategy. Hence, the development of
vaccines is very crucial (Zhou et al., 2021). Given its proven record
in controlling infectious diseases, especially viruses (Yu et al., 2018),
governments and state agencies are encouraged to increase the coverage
of vaccination to reach vast herd immunity through vaccination as soon
as possible. As of June 25, 2021, there are 287 candidate vaccines with
103 of them under clinical evaluation worldwide and an additional 184
candidate vaccines under pre-clinical evaluation (WHO, 2021).
Over the past year, the world has been experiencing a tough and
challenging time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to establishing
new norms and the series of movement control orders across countries
and states have tremendously affected almost all daily activities and
sectors, including higher education, with difficulties to adapt changes
from face-to-face learning to online classes, from laboratory/clinical
activities to virtual mode and work-from-home orders.
The education sector should set a clear exit strategy on how to end
and break away from the COVID-19 nightmare. In view of this, IIUM
with its holistic education concept has been working hard towards
addressing the changes to stay active and relevant. According to the