Present and future challenges in therapeutic designing using computational approaches

Currently, various computational methods are being used for the purpose of therapeutic design. The advent of the Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created a lot of problems due to which the development of effective treatment options is urgently needed. Computational intelligence is used in the control, prevention, prediction, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease. Several important drug targets have been identified in severe acute respiratory syndrome-Coronavirus-2 using in silico methods. Computer-aided drug design includes a variety of theoretical and computational approaches that are part of modern drug discovery. Advances in machine learning methods and their applications speed up the drug discovery process. Exploration of nucleic acid-based therapeutics is playing an important role in healthcare also. But a lot of challenges have also been seen that complicate the therapeutic design. Therefore, investigation of challenges associated with therapeutic design is important, and the present chapter is aimed to cover various therapeutic design approaches and challenges associated with them. Moreover, the role of computational strategies in the exploration of potential therapeutics against COVID-19 has been investigated.