Makers Lab, the R&D arm of India’s leading IT services company Tech Mahindra has leveraged Artificial Intelligence (AI) to conduct research and find potential therapeutic drugs for the treatment of COVID-19.

The IT major is also collaborating with renowned bio-scientist for plausible therapeutic drugs and research laboratories for synthesizing and testing these compounds. Tech Mahindra’s Makers Lab aims to promote technology innovation and recognize transformative ideas that have the potential to make a difference and create disruptive solutions to solve problems. The R&D team has used the Molecular docking approach because of the high transmission rates of COVID-19.

“The COVID-19 disease continues to disrupt the socio-economic order, impacting lives, and livelihood globally. As a leading global digital transformation provider, we are not only committed to ensuring the well-being of our employees, customers, and partner ecosystem; but we are also invested in finding a potential cure for COVID-19 by leveraging cutting edge and futuristic technologies like Artificial  Intelligence,” said CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra.

Molecular docking enables search for therapeutically potent drugs and molecules in real-time, to find compounds that can act as inhibitors against a viral protein computationally.

Tech Mahindra conducted molecular docking studies across 19 FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved ligands and anti-viral drugs on the main protease of the virus.

“Our objective was to prevent the entry of the virus into human host cells such as lung airway epithelial cells. Use of Artificial Intelligence helped the research team to evaluate multiple scenarios with different parameters while finding how molecules dock with the main protease,” said Nikhil Malhotra, Global Head of Makers Lab, Tech Mahindra.

As part of the TechMNxt charter, Tech Mahindra’s Makers Lab is focused on developing future-ready solutions by leveraging next-generation technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality, 5G – Network of the future. There is a range of business problems that Makers lab aims to solve in the future to enhance citizen services and customer experiences.