AdU COVID project gets access to DOST supercomputing facility
Date Posted: August 31, 2021 at 04:29 PM
One of the University’s COVID-19 related research projects was recently recognized by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), letting the team use the DOST Computing and Archiving Research Environment (COARE) Supercomputing Facility.
The study titled Mutation-induced pharmacodynamic variability of known SARS-CoV 2 inhibitors in Philippine isolates, which started just this month, will be allowed to use the said facility along with other research teams from UP Diliman and UP Mindanao.
DOST Secretary Fortunato dela Pena assured such technical assistance will be provided through the department’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI).
AdU’s project lead Dr. Searle Aichelle Duay, mentioned that their research will look into “assessing the effect of SARS CoV-2 amino acid mutations in Philippine isolates to the interactions of known drug inhibitors with their target proteins by looking at correlations between mutational profile and pharmacokinetics, most importantly, the mutations of different SARS-COV 2 protein targets will vary their interactions with known drugs, and at the same time, highlight the importance of genome surveillance and its impact to the local scientific community. ”
“The search for therapeutic treatments for COVID-19 has been a rising interest in the scientific community since the declaration of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the state of the COVID-19 global pandemic. One of the factors to consider in the drug and vaccine development process is the emergence of target mutations which play a critical role in viral pathogenicity and pharmacology,” he also said.
The team will be using different computational resources, including the COARE Supercomputing Facility, which they have secured a three-month access. The use of the facility is renewable upon application.
Dr. Duay’s team composed of graduate student June Alexis Santos, who is in charge of conceptualizing and working on the project, along with two other graduate and one undergraduate students are also doing initiatives to start a computational lab in Adamson that will cater to different research studies that require more than normal computing power.
