IIIT Delhi develops Artificial Intelligence model to repurpose existing drugs

NEW DELHI: The Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Delhi) on Sunday said it has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model for drug repositioning in the treatment of COVID-19. This means that instead of manually going through ever available drug and checking its effectiveness against Covid-19 (which is a painstakingly long process), one can now rely on AI to speed things up and find us the drugs which have the highest probability of success against the disease.

Some well known examples of repositioned drugs are Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), Dexamethasone, Remdesivir, Avifavir/Favipiravir etc. Sime lesser-known drugs that are on trial include Ribavirin, Umifenovir, Sofosbuvir and several antiretrovirals.

The database of drugs (drugbank.ca) lists more than 100 approved antivirals. Trying out all of them in clinical trials is not possible; it will be expensive both financially and in terms of time – a luxury we cannot afford. (IANS)

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