Bioinformatics in Development of Antivirals

Virus infections and epidemics are becoming more common over the world, with new and old viruses resurfacing with fresh intensity. As a result of long development phases, allergic reactions, the emergence of resistant strains, and other factors, traditional drugs and vaccinations are ineffective in combating this threat. The use of bioinformatics has led to a reduction in overall risk and cost for antiviral drug discovery by reducing the time and effort put into various steps of drug discovery. In the wake of the world’s largest epidemic of the twenty-first century, SARS-CoV-2, bioinformatics techniques have been applied in unprecedented ways encoding the molecular characteristics of infectious viruses, vaccine development, and drug discovery. Through remarkable advances in genome sequencing, protein expression, and high-throughput structure determination methods, massive amounts of data have become available to accelerate drug discovery. The advances in computational prowess and bioinformatics algorithms have made it possible to handle such huge and complex datasets. In this chapter, we have outlined various computational approaches available for antiviral discovery, with a few case studies.