A global team of researchers has created an algorithmic tool that can identify existing drugs to combat future pandemics.
“There is no silver bullet to defeat the COVID pandemic as it takes us over a public-health roller-coaster of deaths and devastation,” said Naomi Maria, an immunologist, a visiting scientist at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the lead author.
“However, using this AI tool, coupled with in vitro data and other resources, we’ve been able to model the SARS-CoV-2 infection and identify several COVID-19 drugs currently available as potentially effective in battling the next outbreak.”
Recognising that current methods leave us chasing the virus conceived an approach aimed at closing the gap in future pandemics – repurposing existing drugs to fight back.
To do so, they developed a systems biology tool, the PHENotype SIMulator (PHENSIM). PHENSIM simulates tissue-specific infection of host cells of SARS-CoV-2 and then performs, through a series of computer – or in silico –experiments to identify drugs that would be candidates for repurposing.
The algorithm computes, taking into account selected cells, cell lines, and tissues and under an array of contexts, by propagating the effects and alterations of biomolecules – such as differentially expressed genes, proteins, and microRNAs – and then calculates antiviral effects.
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