During a public health emergency, the reuse of existing drugs is considered a fast track to possible cures, so several companies and academic groups have spent much of the past year looking for COVID-19 remedies in already marketed drugs. Now, a research team from China has identified a chemotherapy drug approved as a potential treatment for coronavirus.
Using a combination of computer screening tools, scientists at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT) demonstrated that Acrotech Biopharma’s Folotyn (pralatrexate), a Chemotherapy, originally developed to treat lymphoma, could be a powerful remedy for SARS. CoV-2, the new coronavirus behind COVID-19.
According to the results published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, they found that pralatrexate more strongly inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication than Gilead Sciences remdesivir under the same experimental conditions. Remdesivir, sold as Veklury, is FDA approved for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Artificial intelligence is widely used in drug research, and the SIAT team thought that a hybrid approach that uses deep learning and molecular simulation could be a better solution than one based on a single method.
The team used different artificial intelligence platforms to examine a library of 1,906 drugs currently marketed for their ability to bind RNA polymerase (RdRP) dependent on coronavirus RNA. For RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, RdRp is essential for copying genomic information that allows them to infect cells and survive. Gilead has shown that remdesivir binds to RdRp and interferes with coronavirus RNA synthesis.
The computational model included four candidates: pralatrexate, antibiotics amoxicillin and azithromycin, and Gilead hepatitis C drug (sofosbuvir).
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Two of the drugs, pralatrexate and azithromycin, inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication in cells. SIAT researchers admitted that chemotherapy is related to several side effects and that its use is limited to an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma called peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Therefore, the drug may have limited clinical use. for patients with COVID-19.
However, the study supports the use of hybrid virtual screening to “help with drug reuse application and facilitate virtual drug screening against other SARS-CoV-2 targets,” the scientists wrote. in the studio.
Many methods of detecting artificial intelligence-based drugs have been applied in COVID-19 drug reuse research. Previous efforts have also pointed to azithromycin as a potential treatment for COVID. And a Cleveland Clinic team used AI to analyze about 27,000 individuals from the COVID-19 registry and found that those who took popular melatonin to help sleep were less likely to test positive for the new coronavirus.
A successful example of AI-based research is BenevolentAI’s identification of the drug Olumiant for Eli Lilly’s rheumatoid arthritis as a potential therapy for COVID-19. The JAK inhibitor obtained FDA emergency authorization as a remdesive supplement for hospitalized COVID patients who need oxygen support after showing that the combination could reduce recovery time.
The SIAT team is now working on developing additional computational methods that it hopes will generate new drugs to treat COVID-19, it said in a statement.