A company located in the UK will harness the power of artificial intelligence to develop an algorithm that could screen more than 15,000 drugs in an attempt to find possible candidates that could be employed to treat COVID-19, as reported by The Guardian.
In a press statement that was released recently, the company has mentioned that it was granted access to an impressive database of drugs by the Scripps Research Institute, which is located in California. A partnership was also secured with the Diamond Light Source, which realizes an in-depth analysis of viruses with the help of high-intensity light.
The company believes that it may identify a drug that could be augmented and used to treat coronavirus in less than one year, and it may be tested on willing COVID-19 patients. A functional medicine could be released as a compassionate treatment before the trials will be completed. However, such a possibility could vary in accordance with the speed at which the drug could be manufactured.
Artificial Intelligence Tests Drugs For COVID-19
More than 15,000 drugs that have been tested and approved for human use are included in the database, with most of them being essential compounds. They were shipped securely from California to Oxford.
Within the press release, it is underlined that all the drugs which will be featured in the object have been cleared by the FDA and other regulators and meet the standards needed for human safety. Select molecules could be collected, analyzed, and used for the accelerated development of an efficient treatment that could be manufactured on a large scale, depending on the chemical composition.
The project has already begun, and it is estimated that all the drugs will be evaluated in less than two months. Suitable candidates will be selected and included in further tests before the researchers will start to work on a treatment. More data could be released in the following weeks.