A medicine would soon be developed to treat the dreaded dengue fever and a research team at GITAM-Hyderabad has filed an international patent towards this direction.
Rambabu Gundla, research supervisor and professor of department of Chemistry, School of Science, GITAM, said the project is being made possible with funding by the department of Science and Technology (DST).
“The DST has sponsored a project on the discovery of drugs to treat dengue fever. GITAM university collaborated with Translation Health Science and Technology Institute, one of the DBT institutes, to execute the project. We have received very promising results on this research. Recently, we filed an international patent on it. This drug is in pre-clinical studies and clinical studies will be conducted in AIIMS, Delhi. Very soon, we will develop a medicine to treat dengue fever,” Mr Rambabu told The Hindu.
The GITAM deemed-to-be University has awarded Ph.D. in Chemistry to Venkatanarayana Chowdary M for his thesis ‘Design, Docking and Synthesis of Oxindole Derivatives as a New Inhibitors of Dengue Virus NS5 RNA Dependent RNA Polymerase’ submitted under the guidance of Mr Rambabu.
Dengue infection causes an acute febrile disease in humans that can turn fatal. The virus is transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes and rapidly replicates in the human host. According to World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 390 million dengue infections occur worldwide per year.