Kuano joins the COVID-19 HPC Consortium
Kuano has been selected to join the COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium and will work with AWS to identify novel COVID-19 drugs using a combination of virtual screening and machine learning approaches. The COVID-19 HPC Consortium is a unique private-public effort spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Energy and IBM to bring together federal government, industry, and academic leaders who are volunteering free compute time and resources on their world-class machines.
Kuano has developed an advanced machine learning platform capable of searching the chemical space surrounding existing antiviral drugs and using deep learning models based on existing binding data to estimate their ability to bind target proteins. In this project the platform will be used to investigate molecules binding to the SARS-CoV-2 main protease, a promising anti-COVID-19 drug target. The support of AWS will enable Kuano to extend these tools through a combination of quantum and molecular simulations. Furthermore, a key component of our approach is to use an enhanced version of a statistical algorithms, created previously to design novel kinase (CDK9) inhibitors, in order to identify molecules that have maximum value in terms of expanding the validity of our platform. The collaboration will enable greatly enhanced capabilities to identify both existing drugs with potential to treat COVID-19 (virtual screening) as well as the discovery of new active compounds.
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