New Potential Drug cure for COVID-19 by Bangalore Based startup “Sravathi” using AI

Bangalore based start-up Sravathi discovers new potential drugs cure for COVID-19 by using Artificial Intelligence In a major breakthrough.  Sravathi, a Bangalore based start-up has discovered new drug molecules, customised for curing COVID-19 by use of Artificial Intelligence and other advanced computing techniques as the whole world is reeling under the life threatening effects of this deadly virus.

Sravathi, which is started by technocrats with vast industrial experience, has come up with more than 100 new molecules which are completely new chemical entities and validated through various physics and mathematics-based models. They have further down selected molecules & customized for effectiveness of curing COVID-19.

Dr. Kishan Gurram, MD & CEO, Sravathi said, “we have used multi-disciplinary experts to get synergy and understand entire mechanism to come up with several new drug like inhibitors. We have selected “3CL protease” which is main protease and responsible for replication of virus as target in COVID-19. Within a short time, Sravathi scientists designed 250,000 molecules and were able to come up with several effective molecules which inhibit the enzyme”. He added, "Further, we have predicted various chemical, fingerprint, biological and toxicity properties using advanced techniques to down select final molecules.”

The aim of this year-old startup is to develop new breakthrough technologies using advanced tools such as Artificial Intelligence, flow chemistry and modeling techniques. The company believes in “multi-disciplinary experts" to solve problems and has built capabilities accordingly.

Mr. Vishnukant Bhutada, Managing Director, Shilpa Medicare Limited that has funded Sravathi, commented, “I believe in advanced technologies in developing solutions and bringing them into the market in shortest possible time. Sravathi has built its capabilities in a very short time- from theoretical to experimental facilities with varied expertise which is helping them in coming up with new solutions such as “new potential drugs for curing COVID-19 that will help India and scientific community of world to fight against this pandemic. I am confident that this team will bring more and more breakthrough technologies to the market by using Artificial Intelligence for many diseases”.

Sravathi has started planning for synthesizing the lead compounds using internal capabilities and are exploring external partnerships to continue their efforts in the entire drug development cycle to bring new drug to the market at earliest after appropriate required approvals.