IBM Supercomputer Helps Identify 77 Drugs That Could Treat The Coronavirus

At the moment, there is no known cure or vaccine for the coronavirus that is plaguing the world. Vaccines have been developed, but their effectiveness has yet to be determined as human trials have only just begun. As for treatments, there have been some drugs discovered that could prove to be effective, but their tests have only been conducted on small scales which means that it is unclear if it will work for the majority of cases.

However, thanks to the work of researchers, more potential treatment options have been discovered. The researchers harnessed the power of IBM’s Summit supercomputer in which the computer has managed to identify 77 drugs that show promise in terms of treating and fighting against the coronavirus.

Starting with more than 8,000 compounds, the use of Summit allowed researchers to quickly identify which drugs are more effective than others in a short period of time. How they identified the potential drugs is by looking at drugs that would be effective at preventing the coronavirus from binding to cells by using a protein spike.

The identified drugs, at least in theory, would instead bind to the protein and prevent the virus from wreaking havoc on the human body. Jeremy Smith, co-author of the research, warns that this does not mean that they have found a cure yet.

According to Smith, “Our results don’t mean that we have found a cure or treatment for the coronavirus. We are very hopeful, though, that our computational findings will both inform future studies and provide a framework that experimentalists will use to further investigate these compounds. Only then will we know whether any of them exhibit the characteristics needed to mitigate this virus.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers, Medical
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Coronavirus, covid-19, Health, ibm, Social Hit