ORGANISED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY, LADY KEANE COLLEGE, SHILLONG

The webinar was organized on the 11^th of September 2020 at 10:00 AM by the Biochemistry Department of Lady Keane College, Shillong using the Cisco Webex meeting platform. The Principal of the College, Dr. (Mrs.) C. Massar gave a heartfelt welcome address to the esteemed resource persons and participants. She emphasized on the need of the webinar to address the challenges that the pandemic has presented to the scientific community as well as proving to be a challenge to the management with regard to academics at the college level.

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Bikash Medhi, Professor & Ex. Additional Medical Superintendent, Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh. He spoke on "COVID-19 and challenges for drug development with future prospects" and vividly expressed the difficulties in developing a vaccine and drugs to combat the novel coronavirus. In his address, he provided us with an insight of the various pandemics the world had faced till date and highlighted on the ways to go about with the therapeutic options guided by evidence-based approach to find a cure and to provide treatment for the novel coronavirus. His innovative and practical talk on the management of COVID-19 suspects and confirmed cases and the drug trials which includes repurposing of drugs and therapies like convalescent plasma therapy that are used to treat such symptomatic patients is eye-opening and provides us with an insight on the challenges that scientists and doctors around the world are facing.

The next session was an invigorating talk entitled "The impact of COVID-19 health crisis on cancer research" delivered by Dr. Manish Kumar, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Molecular & Cellular Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas, Houston, Texas. He highlighted on the potential therapeutic approaches against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus - 2 (SARS-CoV-2) for which the careful selection of therapeutic antibody candidates to prevent unwanted side effects being an important aspect. He also discussed about the fact that people with cancer, cancer survivors and those with compromised immune systems and chronic medical conditions are at a higher risk for the more severe form of COVID-19 infection and hence a quest for a vaccine is an urgent need, though the problem faced by scientists is that more information about the novel coronavirus itself is still required and the type of specific immune response this virus elicits in the host.

Dr. Indu Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Assam University, Silchar on the other hand, gave a presentation entitled "Mitigating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on animal food production for human health". She basically highlighted the impact of the pandemic on the meat industry in India by way of affecting the transport, sale and consumption of animal products, and also suggested of preventive measures and steps which needs to be taken to meet the challenge head on.

Dr. Malagouda D. Patil, Assistant Professor (Genetics & Plant Breeding) & Head, Department of Biotechnology, College of Agriculture, Vijayapur, UAS Dharwad, India, spoke on "Indian Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities". He discussed the several silver linings that India has regarding the productivity of various crops, the current problems faced by the agricultural sector and the use of technology to aid in better food production.

The webinar was supervised and guided by the coordinator, Dr. (Mrs.) Stephanie P. Basaiawmoit, and Chairperson, Dr. Daniel Nongbri, both Assistant Professors in the Biochemistry Department of Lady Keane College, Shillong.