ASU scientists believe that surrogate systems can help in the search for antiviral compounds against coronavirus

The open lecture “How to write the best patent of the year, or how genetic engineering helps to search for antiviral compounds” gathered a large number of people interested in modern methods and approaches in the search for antiviral compounds, on the basis of which it is possible to create drugs that help in the fight against various viral diseases. The scientist, in particular, talked about how it was possible to facilitate the search for antiviral compounds using genetic engineering methods, what modern approaches were used to search for them, and what this area of science expected in the future.

“In the recent years, various surrogate systems for searching for anti-virus compounds have begun to actively develop. These are systems that do not involve working directly with the virus, but which can greatly facilitate the search for the most effective antiviral chemical compounds. These systems are undoubtedly the future! And, I think that in the case of coronavirus, surrogate systems for searching for anti-virus compounds will show themselves on the positive side, because they allow you to quickly start testing anti-virus compounds. By the way, Western scientific journals already publish information on the use of surrogate systems for the search and testing of antiviral compounds against the new coronavirus. One of the latter articles was published on February 4 of this year, which states that with the help of pseudoviruses an inhibitor against a new coronavirus was evaluated,” Dmitry N. Shcherbakov said.