Avian Influenza or ‘Bird flu’, which has become a great threat to the mankind in the existing era, may be eradicated forever, if the efforts of scientists prove to be successful.

Recently, scientists at the University of California, San Diego with the help of the resources at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), claimed to have isolated more than two dozen novel compounds which may prove promising in developing new “designer drugs” to cure Avian Flu. The compounds isolated seemed to be equal or stronger inhibitors than currently available anti-flu remedies in certain cases.

Rommie Amaro, a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry at UC San Diego, said, “If those resistant strains begin to propagate, then that’s when we’re going to be in trouble, because we don’t have any anti-virals active against them. So, we should have something as a backup, and that’s exactly why we’re working on this.”

The study which was written by the researchers in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, also revealed that their work builds on prior work that captured the nanosecond-by-nanosecond movements of a protein called neuraminidase 1 (or N1), needed by the avian flu virus to spread infection to new cells.

The researchers conducted a “virtual screen” of an ensemble of 1,883 compounds during the study, which were selected from h National Cancer Institute Diversity Set. They got the compounds by using a computational tool called AutoDock that predicts how small molecules bind to a receptor of a known three-dimensional structure.

The group basically wanted to determine which compounds fit best into the “hot pocket” region of N1, as compounds that most easily bind to the site are considered to be top hits for validation and further optimization as drug candidates.

Other than this, the researchers also screened five other compounds known to experimentally bind to avian influenza N1, including drugs now available or in clinical trials.

Their efforts revealed that about 27 compounds had potentially the same or stronger bonding affinity than current anti-flu drugs now available, including Tamiflu and Relenza.

The researchers now have plans to test these compounds in their laboratory to determine their efficacy against the virus, and experts at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla will lead the study.