Wearable apps, digital apps, block chain for digital medical records… This is already there.
Covid-19 has emphasis the need of digital care.
The hope today is supercomputers.
No one today would deny the benefit of computers in science.
For calculation, for modelling…
AI could help to accelerate research, to make experimentation safer, thanks to simulation.
Did you know that only 1/10 of all drugs entering clinical trials end up in pharmacies?
And that it takes at least 10 years for medicines to go from lab discovery to the pharmacies.
Clinical trials alone take on average 60% of this time, inflating the cost of R&D tremendously.
Super computers have been used for a long time to treat chronic diseases such as cancer.
Eight supercomputing centres have been selected across the E.U. to deveop applications in personalized medicine and drug design. [1]
But today supercomputers could be key to find a cure for Covid-19, reducing the time it takes to bring a treatment to the market.
As a matter of fact if you think of the corona virus like a lock.
Scientists are today looking for a key to open this lock.
Image by JanBaby-PixaBay
Let me be clearer.
Covid 19 is a virus. That means that it needs a host, to make copy of itself and replicate.
To do that, it needs to bind to the receptors of host cells thanks to a (spike) protein, and enable them to gain entry.[2]
IBM’s super computer Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world’s fastest supercomputer, has simulated 8,000 different molecules resulting in the isolation of 77 compounds likely to render the virus unable to infect host cells. [3]
The hope is that supercomputers can reduce the amount of time it takes to bring novel drugs to market.
But researcher, clinicians, doctors, are still indispensable to fine tune the numbers of molecules, make the clinical trials, administrate the treatments, talk, give reinsurance, explain things to the patient.
[1] https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/news/89663/european-supercomputers-medicine-development/ [Last accessed on March, 28th 2020]
[2] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6483/1260.full [Last accessed on April 2nd, 2020]
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/us/fastest-supercomputer-coronavirus-scn-trnd/index.html [Last accessed on April 2nd, 2020]
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