Odia Researcher In Study Team On COVID-19 Drug

Bhubaneswar: A team of researchers, including an Odia, has conducted a study on the effectiveness of a particular drug in case of COVID-19 patients with mild or moderate symptoms.

The researchers including Aditya Kumar Padhi has carried out the research on Umifenovir (brand name Arbidol), an anti-influenza drug that is recommended by China’s prevention and treatment guidelines, according to a TOI report.

Padhi is a post-doctoral research fellow at Centre for Biosystems Dynamics Research, RIKEN, Japan and the other researchers are Aniruddha Seal, an MSc student of NISER, Bhubaneswar and Timir Tripathi, an assistant professor in North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

According to Padhi, they took up the study on Umifenovir as several anti-viral drugs are used for COVID-19 treatment in the absence of any clinically proven therapy.

He said the coronavirus uses its receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the viral spike-protein to enter and spread the infection. “Therefore, inhibiting this RBD/ACE2 interaction is crucial for the development of effective treatment,” Padhi said.

He completed BTech in biotechnology from BPUT, Rourkela, in 2009 and PhD in biological sciences from IIT, Delhi, in 2016.

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