New Delhi,  May18, 2020: Makers Lab, the research and development arm of Tech Mahindra Ltd has leveraged Artificial Intelligence to conduct research and find potential therapeutic drugs for treatment of COVID-19.
 Tech Mahindra is also collaborating with renowned bio-scientist for plausible therapeutic drugs and research laboratories for synthesizing and testing these compounds. . The R&D team has used Molecular docking approach because of high transmission rates of COVID-19.
This enables search for therapeutically potent drugs and molecules in real time, to find compounds which can act as inhibitors against a viral protein computationally. Tech Mahindra conducted molecular docking studies across 19 FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved ligands and anti-viral drugs on the main protease of the virus.

There is more work needed to be done to move the process from molecular docking to actual drug design, testing and drug development at scale. This is just the first step, where computational analysis can reduce the amount of time taken to narrow down the search amongst the vast array of molecules present in the process of finding a cure to COVID-19.
Says CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra: “The COVID-19 disease continues to disrupt the socio-economic order, impacting lives and livelihood globally. As a leading global digital transformation provider, Tech Mahindra is not only committed to ensure the well-being of our employees, customers and partner ecosystem; but we are also invested in finding a potential cure for COVID-19 by leveraging cutting edge and futuristic technologies like Artificial Intelligence.”