The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in drug development has been hyped up for some time now – and the COVID-19 pandemic is finally a chance for these technologies to prove their worth. We highlight the companies that are using AI to develop treatments that could end the outbreak.

Pharma is facing a race against time to tackle the exponential rise of COVID-19 cases, and as a result there has been an unprecedented level of data sharing and cooperation in the industry to accelerate the process.

Drug repurposing is the most common strategy pharma companies are applying to address the urgency of the pandemic. Our body is a complex machine and sometimes one drug may work for multiple diseases. Perhaps the most successful example of repurposing is Pfizer’s Viagra in erectile dysfunction, originally intended to treat cardiac conditions.

Repurposing drugs with careful rational examination is a slow process. Companies are running trial and error experiments with already-approved drugs, having established safety profiles in humans, on the basis of basic understanding of the disease. When it comes to COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine (approved to treat Malaria) and remdesivir (for Ebola) are the two best-known examples of this so far.

Source: pharmaphorum.com