With the emergence of new COVID-19 variants, it has become clear that to defeat COVID-19, we need an arsenal of weapons that goes beyond the sole reliance on vaccines. Beyond new variants, there will always be individuals that cannot or will not get vaccinated, and also vaccinated individuals who also get COVID, albeit in a milder form. Therefore, doctors across the globe will need at their disposal drugs that can effectively combat infection by the virus.
DisCO, DIScovery of COVID-19 inhibitors, is a recently-launched project in the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking (CMMB) at the University of Malta. The main aim of the project is to identify chemical compounds that may be potentially used as drugs against COVID-19 infection.
Nowadays, the path towards the discovery of new drugs, relies heavily on the use of computational approaches in a process known as computer-aided drug design (CADD). One of the CADD tools that is used in the initial stages of drug discovery is known as virtual screening. Virtual screening is the process whereby huge libraries of compounds are screened computationally in order to identify interesting hits that are effective at inhibiting a particular cellular or viral process that results in the control of the virus.
This is precisely what we hope to achieve through DisCO, to identify interesting compounds through the use of computer programs which may be effective against SARS-CoV-2, and then to test these compounds in the laboratory to verify our computational predictions. Such studies usually result in a number of compounds of interest that would need further testing and refinement. Thus, the results achieved through this project can be taken up further to develop drugs effective against COVID-19 and related diseases.
Another aim of the project is to build capacity locally in the field of bioinformatics and CADD, adding value to the existing course leading to a Master of Science in Bioinformatics offered by CMMB at the University of Malta, and possibly involving doctoral students. These capacity building and research efforts are in line with Malta’s research and innovation strategy, and are expected to lead to bioinformatics becoming a priority area for Malta.
Jean-Paul Ebejer is a senior lecturer at the University of Malta and leads the DisCO project. Byron Baron and Tristan Camilleri are also part of the scientific team. Project DisCO is financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology, for and on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology, through the Infectious Disease Programme.
Sound Bites
• Earth’s global average surface temperature in 2021 tied with 2018 as the sixth warmest on record, according to independent analyses done by NASA and NOAA. Collectively, the past eight years are the warmest years since modern record-keeping began in 1880.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220113230132.htm
• When elderly people stay active, their brains have more of a class of proteins that enhances the connections between neurons to maintain healthy cognition, a UC San Francisco study has found. This protective impact was found even in people whose brains at autopsy were riddled with toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. “Our work is the first that uses human data to show that synaptic protein regulation is related to physical activity and may drive the beneficial cognitive outcomes we see,” said Kaitlin Casaletto, an assistant professor of neurology and lead author on the study. The beneficial effects of physical activity on cognition have been shown in mice but have been much harder to demonstrate in people.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220107100955.htm
For more sound bites, listen to Radio Mocha every Saturday at 7.30pm on Radju Malta and the following Monday at 9pm on Radju Malta 2 https://www. fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.
DID YOU KNOW?
• According to a study by the Worchester Polytechnic Institute, baseball is empirically the most boring sport to watch. Premier League football is the least boring.
• According to the British Medical Journal, the single most common cause of headache is eating ice cream.
• According to a study by Cardiff University, both men and women are judged to look better when they are wearing a face mask.
• In 2006, The Ig Nobel Prize in literature went to the Princeton psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer for his paper ‘Consequences of erudite vernacular utilised irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly’.
For more trivia, see: www.um.edu.mt/ think.