Facing the epidemic, Canadian AI medical company Cyclica has formulated a potential drug reuse plan for novel coronavirus pneumonia to accelerate the screening of effective drugs.

In the past few weeks, in response to novel coronavirus, Canadian AI medical company Cyclica has formulated a potential drug reuse plan based on MatchMaker, a self-developed proteome screening engine, and selected some potentially effective drugs from the drugs that have been approved by tge FDA and are considered safe to be applied clinically, forming the candidate database PolypharmDB.

The company then searched for potential conjugates of human targets related to the pathogenesis of novel coronavirus pneumonia through PolypharmDB.

Up to now, Cyclica has modeled two therapy-related novel coronavirus pneumonia proteins and identified 10 potential effective drugs based on existing coronavirus structures and recent genomic studies. These drugs are currently under review by pharmaceutical chemists and biochemists. Cyclica is willing to share the results and provide the molecules to appropriate partners.

Cyclica has formulated a potential drug reuse plan for novel coronavirus pneumonia. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In response to novel coronavirus pneumonia, Cyclica evaluated the efficacy of the drugs that have been approved by the FDA and are considered safe to be applied clinically.

Through MatchMaker, Cyclica scanned 6,700 approved drugs and drug candidates that had undergone at least Phase I clinical trials, and screened them one by one for the entire human proteome, forming the database PolypharmDB. Cyclica then searched for potential conjugates of human targets related to the pathogenesis of novel coronavirus pneumonia through PolypharmDB. 

Based on existing coronavirus structures and recent genomic studies, Cyclica has modeled two therapy-related novel coronavirus pneumonia proteins.

The first is called 3C protease (3Cprot), which is essential for virus replication; the second is spike glycoprotein, which binds to human host cells and induces virus invasion. Cyclica added this information to PolypharmDB, and evaluated whether the pharmaceutical molecules can interact with viral targets through MatchMaker.

By searching for the expanded PolypharmDB, molecules that interact with a given viral target are identified. Using this method, Cyclica identified 10 drugs that bind to 3C proteases relatively well compared to human proteins (about 9,000 in number). These drugs are currently under review by pharmaceutical chemists and biochemists.

Cyclica is willing to share relevant results Although Cyclica has reviewed the references and scientifically evaluated them, it has not validated the target effects of these molecules through experiments, because the biological detection methods required for validation are temporarily not available.

However, given the urgency of the situation, Cyclica is willing to share relevant results to promote research. If you are interested in the selected drugs, please contact Cyclica directly. Cyclica is willing to provide the molecules for free.