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Natural product analogs are significant sources for therapeutic agents. To capitalize efficiently on the effective features of naturally occurring substances, a natural product-based library production platform has been devised at Aurigene for drug lead discovery. This approach combines the attractive biological and physicochemical properties of natural product scaffolds, provided by eons of natural selection, with the chemical diversity available from parallel synthetic methods. Virtual property analysis, using computational methods described here, guides the selection of a set of natural product scaffolds that are both structurally diverse and likely to have favorable pharmacokinetic properties. The experimental characterization of several in vitro ADME properties of twenty of these scaffolds, and of a small set of designed congeners based upon one scaffold, is also described. These data confirm that most of the scaffolds and the designed library members have properties favorable to their utilization for creating libraries of lead-like molecules.

Nature, which remains a central drug discovery pool, is always looked upon to find a putative druggable lead. The natural products and phytochemical derived from plants are essential during a global health crisis. This class represents one of the most practical and promising approaches to decrease pandemic's intensity owing to their therapeutic potential. The present manuscript is therefore kept forth to give the researchers updated information on undergoing research in allied areas of natural product-based drug discovery, particularly for Covid-19 disease. The study briefly shreds evidence from in vitro and in silico researches done so far to find a lead molecule against Covid-19. Following this, we exhaustively explored the concept of chemical space and molecular similarity parameters for the drug discovery about the lead(s) generated from in silico -based studies. The comparison was drawn using FDA-approved anti-infective agents during 2015–2020 using key descriptors to evaluate druglike properties. The outcomes of results were further corroborated using Molecular Dynamics studies which suggested the outcomes in alignment with chemical space ranking. In a nutshell, current research work aims to provide a holistic strategic approach to drug design, keeping in view the identified phytochemicals against Covid-19.

Aeromonads resides in aquatic environments and infect humans and fish among other animals. This opportunistic pathogen is predicted to have several pili and fimbriae genes which may promote biofilm formation and attachment affecting the infection process. The present study compares biofilm formation and subsequent infection on MDCK cell lines using wildtype Aeromonas hydrophila and putative type IV pilin biosynthesis gene mutant generated by standard protocol. The results indicate the involvement of putative pilus biosynthesis operon AHA0686-AHA0696 in biofilm formation of Aeromonas hydrophila and infection of MDCK cells. In silico analysis of the operon predicts to contain putative type IV pili and pilin biosynthetic genes. Detailed analysis of these genes is required to evaluate the applicability of these mutant strains as potential vaccine candidates.

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