Drug Docking Studies with SARS-CoV-2

Drug Docking Studies with SARS-CoV-2

Computational docking studies are extremely useful for quantitatively studying the abilities of different chemical compounds to bind to proteins. When compounds bind effectively enough to a protein, they can often cause a change in its function. This approach is the one we have been using to study potential drug targets against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Docking studies of the virus’s main protease with a wide array of molecules can illuminate potential methods by which SARS-CoV-2’s method of infection can be intercepted, thereby providing a viable treatment for infected patients. I will present a poster explaining the advantages of the main protease as a target, the docking study methodology, and relevant results that have been found thus far. Additionally, an explanation will be given into this method’s usefulness against SARS-CoV-2.