IIT Indore introduces course on techniques in drug design

Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IIT-I) has unveiled an active learning course on "Tools and Techniques in Drug Design, Discovery and Delivery". The course is sponsored by the technical education quality improvement programme (TEQIP), Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).

The course will see participation from students and faculties from various engineering colleges from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat.

Rahul Sharma, the Media Coordinator of IIT Indore, said, "On an average, a successful transformation of a drug from bench side to bedside takes somewhere around 12- 15 years of vigorous research and development and costs more than $500- 1000 million. Therefore, efficient tools and techniques are needed to predict the lead compound before committing that huge amount of investments. Similarly, preclinical studies play an instrumental role before taking the drugs into clinical trials."

A release issued by IIT Indore stated, "This course covers the full spectrum of the development of a drug starting from the synthesis/discovery of lead compound to computational studies for the optimization of the structure of the lead, and finally talking about the delivery of the drug into the target site to minimize adverse effects."