{"id":3063,"date":"2021-02-15T17:21:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T17:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1339014"},"modified":"2021-02-15T17:21:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T17:21:36","slug":"scientists-use-ai-to-identify-existing-drugs-to-fight-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=3063","title":{"rendered":"Scientists use AI to identify existing drugs to fight COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n

Scientists have used machine learning to find drugs already on the market that could also fight COVID-19 in elderly patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking new drugs takes forever,\u201d said<\/a> study co-author Caroline Uhler, a computational biologist at MIT. \u201cReally, the only expedient option is to repurpose existing drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study team searched for potential treatments by analyzing changes to gene expressions in lung cells caused by both the disease and aging.<\/p>\n

Uhler said this combination could help medical experts find drugs to test on older people:<\/p>\n

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We need to look at aging together with SARS-CoV-2 \u2014 what are the genes at the intersection of these two pathways?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The researchers sought to answer this question through a three-step process<\/span><\/p>\n

[Read: How Polestar is using blockchain to increase transparency<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

First, they generated a list of candidate drugs using an autoencoder, a type of neural network that finds data representations in an unsupervised manner.<\/p>\n

The autoencoder analyzed two datasets of gene expression patterns to identify drugs that appeared to counteract the virus.<\/p>\n

Next, the researchers narrowed down the list by mapping the interactions of proteins involved in the aging and infection pathways. They then identified areas of overlap between the two maps.<\/span><\/p>\n

This pinpointed the gene expression network a drug should target to fight COVID-19 in older patients.<\/p>\n

A causal framework<\/h2>\n

Finally, the team used statistical algorithms to analyze causality in the network. This allowed them to identify the specific genes a drug should target to minimize the impact of infection.<\/p>\n

The system highlighted the RIPK1 gene as a promising target for the COVID-19 drugs. The researchers then found a list of approved drugs that act on RIPK1.<\/p>\n

Some of these have been approved for treating cancer, while others are already being tested on COVID-19 patients.<\/p>\n

The researchers note that rigorous in vitro experiments and clinical trials are still required to determine their efficacy. But they also envision extending their framework to other infections:<\/p>\n

\n

While we apply our computational platform in the context of SARS-CoV-2, our algorithms integrate data modalities that are available for many diseases, thereby making them broadly applicable.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can read the study paper in Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Published February 15, 2021 \u2014 17:21 UTC <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have used machine learning to find drugs already on the market that could also fight COVID-19 in elderly patients. \u201cMaking new drugs takes forever,\u201d said study co-author Caroline Uhler, a computational biologist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}