Oral Medication for COVID-19 Discovered Using Artificial Intelligence

LSU DeepDrug Project and Skymount Medical Design Clinical Trial, Adjunct Professor Kishor Wasan Says

SASKATOON,, SK , CANADA, January 18, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Louisiana State University researchers have developed an oral medication for people with mild-to-moderate symptoms of COVID-19 using LSU DeepDrug program, a drug discovery platform powered by artificial intelligence. The candidate medication combines a cancer therapy already approved by the FDA with an antiparasitic drug already approved by the FDA.


Predictive studies leveraged by Louisiana State University's AI technology and phase I testing conducted by the Illinois Institute of Technology show the combination of drugs to be 97 percent effective for reducing viral load of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.


Clinical Testing Is Underway, Adjunct Professor Kishor Wasan Says

Clinical trials were facilitated by Skymount Medical in partnership with the Riverside University Health System in California. Says Dr. Kishor Wasan, chief scientific and medical officer at Skymount Medical "We are excited to partner with Dr. Bruce Weng's team at Riverside University Health System to facilitate a human clinical trial to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of this drug combination in adults testing positive for COVID-19 and exhibiting mild-to-moderate symptoms."


Kishor Wasan, who is also a former dean and current adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, says the double-blind intervention is being conducted among volunteers being treated on an outpatient basis. The study will determine whether the drug duo reduces length and severity of symptoms and decreases need for hospitalization.


"The drug combination may also reduce the symptoms of long-haul COVID," Adjunct Professor Kishor Wasan said. "We hope it may reduce organ damage and mental health symptoms."


DeepDrug, the artificial intelligence platform that identified the potential oral therapeutic, is the creation of an interdisciplinary team of Louisiana State University researchers headed by Supratik Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor in the university's Division of Computer Science and Engineering. DeepDrug uses its next-generation machine learning capabilities to reduce cost and time of drug discovery up to 90 percent.


“It is extraordinarily gratifying to see this potential medication so quickly enter into the human study phase,” Mukhopadhyay said. “The fact that we have arrived at this stage so quickly is attributable to Skymount Medical’s vast professional medical network and to our DeepDrug platform, which was able to identify this combination of medications in just a fraction of the time that traditional research methods would take.”


Skymount Medical Testing Multiple Drug Combinations for COVID-19

Skymount is currently testing a number of therapeutic combinations for COVID-19 treatment in cell and culture models. Studies are currently underway at th Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) in Chicago, at the University of Saskatchewan’s VIDO-InterVac Animal Testing Center, and at UC Riverside, and at McGill and Laval Universities.


Skymount Medical focuses on the application of artificial intelligence to ameliorating current and preventing future pandemics. Skymount finds cutting-edge applications in existing formularies, making new therapies quickly and inexpensively available where they are needed. 

Caroline Hunter
Web Presence, LLC
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