Looking for a needle in a haystack: TU Dresden's BIOTEC and its PharmAI spin-off analyse millions of active substances that could cure Covid-19

The goal: Identify new drugs for Covid-19 therapy in the fastest possible way, conduct clinical tests and win the battle against the virus.

The method: A large-scale research competition that screens billions of molecules in order to find those blocking interactions on SARS-CoV-2, identifying those that can be used therapeutically very quickly thanks to their existing FDA-approval.

The Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) of TU Dresden with its bioinformatics group and the spin-off PharmAI GmbH participate in such a competition – the so-called JEDI Grand Challenge. Until tomorrow, proposals for active substances that have the potential to stop the activity and reproduction of the virus can be submitted. The Dresden team led by Prof. Michael Schroeder (BIOTEC) and Dr. Joachim Haupt (PharmAI) used proprietary screening algorithms to screen several drug libraries containing five million substances for candidates against Covid-19. They submitted three promising protein targets to The Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI).

Further information in the press release.