UK-based startup Benevolent AI has recently been one of the few companies using artificial intelligence to manufacture coronavirus drugs.
The company says that it is entering the next phase of manufacturing a drug for possible treatment of the coronavirus. This drug, already approved as a potential treatment for Covid-19, has now entered clinical trials, which has shown a silver lining to the world at the time of this epidemic. In February Benevolent AI set up an expert scientific team and has begun investigating clinical trials of this drug using its drug discovery platform. Benevolent AI quickly joined a race to identify drugs that can block the virus from entering the body’s cells. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and many other labs are looking into similar treatments. Benevolent AI, which has received more than $292 million from the Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Goldman Sachs, and others, had spent the past several years building technology that could help find information buried in vast troves of academic papers and other scientific literature.
BenevolentAI, a leader in the creation and application of AI and machine learning to transform the way medicines are discovered and developed, today announced that baricitinib, which it identified this year as a potential treatment for COVID-19, will be entering late-stage phase 3 clinical trials to treat the disease, the greatest medical challenge of the century. This new trial is occurring alongside a Canadian government-sponsored randomised-controlled trial already underway of baricitinib as a potential treatment. Others studies are ongoing or being set up currently.
Baricitinib is an already approved drug developed by Eli Lilly and Incyte for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and is being studied for other indications. The randomised trial announced by Eli Lilly today with the US National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will investigate the efficacy and safety of baricitinib as a potential treatment for patients with serious COVID-19 infections. The study will begin in the US in late April with planned expansion to additional sites in Europe and Asia. Results are expected within the next two months.
The company’s CEO Joanna Shields (Baroness Shields OBE) said that in response to the treatment of Covid-19, we worked towards developing the drug of the disease to understand the body’s response rather than diagnosing it directly.
What they mean is that instead of focusing only on drugs, we discovered ways to disrupt the cellular processes that the virus infects human cells. This allows us to identify previously approved drugs and prevent cytokine storms in addition to stopping the movement of the virus. Diseases such as COVID-19 and influenza are an overgrowth of the body’s immune system called the cytokine storm, which can be fatal due to excess. Cytokines are small proteins released by many different cells in the body including the immune system, where they coordinate the body’s response against infection and increase inflammation. Some people activate more immune cells in the body due to excessive or uncontrolled secretion of cytokines, resulting in ‘hyper inflammation’ that can severely damage or kill a person. However, it will still take a year to develop a potential drug or vaccine.
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