Artificial Intelligence firm Biovista repositions four promising therapeutics against COVID-19

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Biovista, a privately-held AI / bioscience firm best known for drug repositioning, has identified four treatments – two prescription drugs and two over-the-counter compounds — to counter key symptoms of COVID-19.

"Drug AI helps find that needle in the haystack, and we are optimistic that we have found four of them to start," said Aris Persidis, Biovista's President and Co-Founder.

The first drug has the potential to reduce viral replication, limit inflammatory events, and help protect against acute lung injury. The second drug has the potential to reduce viral load, improving the primary ARDS component of the disease and reducing the cytokine storm in COVID-19. The two over-the-counter compounds would be adjunct treatments.These findings are presented in a White Paper which Biovista is making available upon request via email: covid-19whitepaper@biovista.com.

"These compounds won't cure COVID-19, but appear able, based on their mechanism of action, to limit the damage," said Dr. Eftychia Lekka, Senior Investigator, Drug Discovery. "We continue to probe deeper and update our findings."

With a predictive success rate of over 77%, Biovista has significant experience in drug repositioning, on which many of the world's hopes for COVID therapeutics revolve today. "Our track record gives us confidence that we can find compounds to target COVID-19 and improve patient outcomes," said Dr. Persidis.

Looking at known and likely mechanisms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Biovista's AI platform has assessed to date over 13,000 approved drugs and pharmaceutically active compounds. 

"Working from these initial findings, we are open to collaborators able to test these candidates and hypotheses in either virtual clinical trials using EMR and EHR data, or in models and trials," said Dr. Persidis.

To collaborate, please contact us at info@biovista.com. 

About Biovista

Biovista's Project Prodigy AI develops novel hypotheses supported by detailed reasoning from the $2T-worth of publicly available research data. The objective is to solve complex healthcare problems, including:
1. Finding new uses for existing drugs
2. Finding existing drugs to target a disease of interest, as in this case with COVID-19
3. Assessing the safety of drugs entering the clinic and how best to mitigate adverse drug reactions

Biovista was recently named a top-20 company in AI drug development by Forbes ( https://bit.ly/2RWYhgE ).

For more information, please visit Biovista's website: www.biovista.com 

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SOURCE Biovista