VANCOUVER, November 3, 2020 / Pharmasilico, the AI-based drug discovery company, is pleased to announce that they have leveraged their proprietary AI platform to identify 22 candidate drugs that could be effective in combating the current global COVID-19 pandemic. Twelve (12) of the 22 candidates identified are drugs that are already approved and used in the clinic to treat other medical conditions.
Amidst of the pandemic, “we decided to shift some focus away from identifying novel kinase therapeutics towards building computational models for predicting FDA approved drugs which could be repurposed as COVID-19 therapeutics,” says Pharmasilico’s CEO, Dr. Jianghong An.
With the increasing number of cases globally, and the risk of further lock downs and death in the second wave of the pandemic, rapid assessment of these therapeutic candidates has the potential to address a huge unmet need with a potential economic benefit since many of these drugs would be considered to be classed as generic medicines.
Dr. An states that “we are thrilled to have identified new candidate drugs, some of which are known anti-infectives. An exciting part for Pharmasilico, and more specifically our technology, is that our candidates include confirmed candidates from others like camostat and nafamostat, which provided internal validation of the predictions made by our proprietary platform.”
“We genuinely feel that this is a step in the right direction,” says An. “Many of these candidates could conceivably be fast-tracked since safety has already been established. Further, with the uncertainty around the successful development of a vaccine and the corresponding timelines associated with approval, therapeutic strategies may be our only course of action in effectively managing the pandemic and supporting the safe return to our normal way of life.”
“We are currently reaching out to the manufacturers of these drugs to solicit their interest in working with us to evaluate and also seeking active collaborations with the clinical community to evaluate the therapeutic potential of these plausible therapeutic modalities.
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MEDIA CONTACT
Dr. Jianghong An, CEO, Pharmasilicio
jan@pharmasilico.com
About Pharmasilico
PharmaSilico is dedicated to offering hope for a healthier and happier future through our innovations. Our smart, precise and efficient in silico kinase drug discovery platform, BioTraxx, helps develop better medicines faster.
By increasing the efficiency and accuracy of the drug design, we envision a world in which every disease, where a kinase inhibitor can be utilized, has an effective treatment.