From computers to healthcare: Workshop on Computer-Aided Drug Design and Structural Bioinformatics at IIT-BHU
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India:
The Interdisciplinary Data Analytics and Predictive Technologies (I-DAPT) Hub Foundation under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) at IIT-BHU commenced a weeklong short-term course on Computer-Aided Drug Design and Structural Bioinformatics 2023 (CADDSB-2023) from March 13 to 17, 2023.
About 80 participants from heterogeneous disciplines from all over India are participating in this course. The scope and the contents of the course have been designed in such a way that it would immensely help undergraduate, postgraduate, Ph.D. students, postdocs, and even faculties to gain comprehensive knowledge in the emerging fields of drug design and discovery.
Addressing the inaugural function, the project director of the I-DAPT Hub foundation and Dean (Research & Development) of IIT-BHU, Prof Vikash Kumar Dubey said that the invited lectures and hands-on sessions from leading experts in the field would surely open newer vistas of specialized knowledge in the domain of artificial intelligence/machine learning-enabled computational biology discovery and, eventually, health informatics and translational research.
The Project Coordinator of the I-DAPT Hub foundation, Dr R.K. Singh said that courses like this would empower younger generations to learn and to think analytically about the critical health-related problems persisting in society. The course conveners, Dr Aditya Kumar Padhi and Dr Sumit Kumar Singh highlighted that the contents of the course comprising emerging areas of vaccine informatics, glycoinformatics, disease modeling, high-throughput protein design, structural biology (involving X-ray crystallography and Cryo-electron microscopy), would significantly boost the fundamental and practical knowledge of participants.
“I firmly believe that it perfectly aligns with the healthcare initiatives of Govt of India and with the visionary national mission, such as the “PM Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission” of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi”, said Prof Pramod Kumar Jain, Director of IIT-BHU Varanasi.
On the first day of the program, the Chief Guest of the event, Honorary Professor Krishna Misra from IIIT-Allahabad, delivered the inaugural lecture. She emphasized how the integration of life science problems with computer sciences is the need of the hour and elaborated on the importance of bioinformatics in solving healthcare-related problems and disease management. She highlighted a plethora of career opportunities in the bioinformatics sector and numerous ways of solving healthcare-related issues.
Ravi Khare, CEO of Symphony Technologies, shared a holistic overview of the role of modern statistical tools in drug development and manufacturing.
Dr. Anshu Bharadwaj, a principal scientist at IMTECH, Chandigarh, discussed the looming threats of increased antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the applications of data-driven drug discovery using machine learning, network pharmacology and dynamic pharmacophore approach in mitigating the hazard.
Dr Timir Tripathi, Senior Assistant Professor from North-Eastern Hill University, comprehensively discussed various nuances of research ethics and integrity in the presentation of structural data.
Dr Janesh Kumar, from CCMB Hyderabad, extensively discussed the nitty-gritty of the revolutionary cryo-electron microscopy technique and its application in drug discovery. Prof. B Jayaram, an emeritus professor from IIT Delhi, envisioned a disease-free planet and the potential role of data analytics and computational biology in realizing this ambitious dream. He showcased the utility of a supercomputing facility, various computational suites, and software (e.g., Sanjeevini, Bhageerath, Dhanvantri), all indigenously developed in his lab at IIT Delhi, that can significantly reduce the drug development timelines.
Along the same lines, it is noteworthy that IIT-BHU, has also established a “Param Shivay” supercomputing facility to cater to the growing demand for handling and computing big data, said Prof. Jain.
The upcoming expert talks in the course will feature Dr Saugata Hazra from IIT Roorkee, Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Singh from the Centre of Biomedical Research, Lucknow, Dr. Narendra Chirmule, Visiting professor at IIT Bombay, and Prof. Sanjib Senapati from IIT Madras. A range of topics, including the understanding of antimicrobial drug resistance through structural biology-bioinformatics methods, computational approaches to study host-pathogen interaction of the HIV virus, omics techniques in drug discovery, and investigation of drug resistance and unhindered activity of HIV proteases using molecular dynamic simulations and network analysis will be discussed.
Moreover, each day includes two hands-on training sessions by the invited experts on these topics. These sessions will be instrumental in honing the practical skills of the participants and would help to create trained manpower for the Indian Industry and academia. Such short-term courses will foster a mindset among the youth towards these technological developments in the healthcare sector, added Prof. Jain.
–IiT-BHU press release
