The government of India sponsored project on development of new drugs to treat vector borne diseases undertaken by the Bioinformatics Infrastructure Facility Centre of DBT at the Presidency College in Chennai has entered into second phase of research triggering the hope that a new drug to treat all mosquito borne diseases will come out soon.

The research is carried out in association with Department of Bioinformatics Centre of Pondicherry University and the PG Department of Zoology, DAV College, Kanpur, said Dr S Rajarajan, president of Indian Association of Medical & Pharmaceutical Virologists and head of the research project. The project is funded by department of biotechnology, government of India. Rs.1 crore was already handed over to the department by the government, he added.

He said the pattern of the research is to collect female mosquitoes, separate the virus and identify them. Then create a database and develop anti-virals to treat mosquito borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis. For the research the department is applying a new method with the help of computer.

Applying a new software, computer is used to check the suitability of synthetic molecules and identify among them the highly potential anti-viral molecules by Insilco methods. This will reveal which molecule has the highest drug potentiality. The centre at the Pondicherry University is identifying the molecules and the laboratory at the Presidency College does test the anti-viral activity.

According to him, the research project has started in January 2012 and three more years are required to complete the project. He said the Chennai based pharmaceutical company Aravind Remedies has agreed to support this project as a potential industrial partner.

“For dengue, we have identified four molecules, two from synthetic and two from natural resources, and for chikungunya two synthetic molecules and one molecule from natural resources were identified. After developing drugs we will go for animal study for which an agreement has been made with Tamil Nadu veterinary university. Including clinical trials, total three years will be taken to complete the project,” Dr Rajarajan said.

The scientist opined that there was need for a chain of drugs for any disease as resistance to a drug by a virus may develop sooner or later. If one drug is not working or found having resistant strains, an alternative drug can be used. In the case of chicken pox, there are reports that the drug Acyclovir is having few resistant strains. So we must develop two or three drugs comparable or superior to the commonly used drugs for any disease, he said.