Evotec (UK) Ltd., Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK.
Methods Mol Biol. 2022;2390:103-112. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1787-8_3.
The development of vaccines for the treatment of COVID-19 is paving the way for new hope. Despite this, the risk of the virus mutating into a vaccine-resistant variant still persists. As a result, the demand of efficacious drugs to treat COVID-19 is still pertinent. To this end, scientists continue to identify and repurpose marketed drugs for this new disease. Many of these drugs are currently undergoing clinical trials and, so far, only one has been officially approved by FDA. Drug repurposing is a much faster route to the clinic than standard drug development of novel molecules, nevertheless in a pandemic this process is still not fast enough to halt the spread of the virus. Artificial intelligence has already played a large part in hastening the drug discovery process, not only by facilitating the selection of potential drug candidates but also in monitoring the pandemic and enabling faster diagnosis of patients. In this chapter, we focus on the impact and challenges that artificial intelligence has demonstrated thus far with respect to drug repurposing of therapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19.
疫苗的开发为治疗 COVID-19 带来了新的希望。尽管如此，病毒变异成疫苗耐药变体的风险仍然存在。因此，治疗 COVID-19 的有效药物的需求仍然存在。为此，科学家们继续寻找和重新利用已上市的药物来治疗这种新疾病。其中许多药物目前正在进行临床试验，到目前为止，只有一种药物被 FDA 正式批准。药物再利用是一种比新型分子标准药物开发更快的进入临床的途径，但在大流行期间，这一过程仍然不够快，无法阻止病毒的传播。人工智能已经在加速药物发现过程中发挥了重要作用，不仅通过促进潜在药物候选物的选择，而且还通过监测大流行和实现对患者的更快诊断。在本章中，我们重点介绍人工智能迄今为止在治疗 COVID-19 的药物再利用方面所展示的影响和挑战。
