JEDI Billion Molecules against Covid19 GrandChallenge: Dresden team advances to the testing phase

The Dresden team of researchers from the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) of TU Dresden and PharmAI is one of the final teams selected for the next stage of the JEDI Billion Molecules against Covid19 GrandChallenge. 107 compounds submitted by the Dresden team are in the pool of 1200 compounds that will be tested for their potential to block SARS-CoV-2 virus. The compounds will be produced in the next weeks and the tests will begin in 2021.

The Dresden team is led by Prof. Michael Schroeder from the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) of TU Dresden and Dr. Joachim Haupt from PharmAI, BIOTEC spin-off company.  “We are very excited to hear that a good part of the compounds our team submitted to the JEDI GrandChallenge was selected for the next testing phase. We have dedicated years of research to establish cutting-edge algorithms for drug development and we are pleased that we could employ our DiscoveryEngine to the search for COVID-19 drugs,” says Prof. Schroeder.

The DiscoveryEngine is a virtual screening software developed at BIOTEC. It is at the heart of the PharmAI spin-off company. It analyzes the information hidden in the structures of proteins and molecules and identifies compounds that can effectively act against a particular disease. It is a fast and accurate engine for drug development and potentially an excellent tool in the ongoing search for the COVID-19 therapy.

The JEDI Billion Molecules against Covid19 GrandChallenge started in May 2020 as a global and collaborative effort to identify new drugs for COVID-19 in the fastest possible way. An estimated 54 billion molecules were screened using different computational approaches by more than 130 teams from institutions and companies around the world. Based on these results, the JEDI Scientific Committee used several computational approaches to sort the list of provided compounds. They eliminated the duplicated molecules and selected 1200 most promising predictions. The compounds which made it to this “ultimate list” will be synthesized and used in cell assays to test their ability to suppress SARS-CoV-2 virus.