A team of Australian and Indian researchers have published a landmark paper identifying the top 214 candidates for COVID-19 drug repurposing by methodically down-selecting from an initial list of 7,817.
The peer-reviewed paper “Systematic Down-Selection of Repurposed Drug Candidates for COVID-19” has been published by the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
The paper has lead authors from BITS Pilani, one of the first institutions of eminence declared by the Indian government and Monash University, which has the world’s best pharmacy department according to the latest QS rankings.
Funded by $1.7 million by the Commonwealth’s Medical Research Future Fund and Australia’s science agency CSIRO, the study also involved Griffith, Melbourne, Queensland, Swinburne, Utah and York universities.
Senior author and University of York Professor S.S. Vasan who led the project, said, “It has been a massive team effort, going through nearly 8000 compounds and 14000 assay data, to down-select the top 200 methodically.“
“Without a single or two-dose COVID-19 vaccine that effectively stops infection, and with variants emerging continuously, we need to look at repurposed drugs for potential treatments that are safe, effective and affordable worldwide. However, it’s not feasible to look at thousands of candidates so our prioritisation methodology will be very useful,” he added.
The down-selection was conducted by a panel of experts co-chaired by Associate Professor Natalie Trevaskis of Monash University.
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