Wielding the speed and power of artificial intelligence, Feixiong Cheng, PhD, set about identifying existing FDA-approved drugs that could be repurposed against COVID-19.

From start to finish, the project took 11 days — a flash compared to the 10 to 20 years it takes to develop a new drug. Dr. Cheng, a computational and systems biologist in Lerner Research Institute’s Genomic Medicine Institute, used a network medicine-based prediction model to narrow down numerous medications to 16 that showed potential against the virus.

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Dr. Feixiong Cheng harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to find pharmaceutical treatments for COVID-19. | Photo: Stephen Travarca

Dr. Cheng and his team are planning to study the effectiveness of two of the identified drugs: toremifene and melatonin.

Their approach differs from traditional antiviral research, which generally targets virus proteins. Dr. Cheng and his colleagues study the entire interactome network, which includes all the protein-protein interactions that take place inside a cell, including those of human proteins. This can lead to effective drug combinations for fighting COVID-19 by synergistically blocking antiviral pathways (toremifene) and boosting human immunity (melatonin).