Machine Learning Based QSAR for Discovering Potential Drug Candidate from Endemic Plants of Sri Lanka - Case Study: HIV-1 RT

Diseases have become an inevitable aspect in the current world and the development of medicines have become a very important and crucial field. Computer-aided drug designing is an approach that is being used in the drug development process to minimize the high costs and time involved. An important method used along with this is QSAR where the mathematical relationships between chemical and molecular structures are identified. Plants have been proved to be a valuable and useful medicine for curing various kinds of diseases and Sri Lanka is a tropical country known as a country where Ayurvedic medicines and treatments are available. There are also a number of plants which are endemic to the country and could carry possible cures for diseases. The research presented in the paper aims to develop a model using a machine learning approach to identify potential drug candidates from a set of endemic plants of Sri Lanka.