Data-driven strategies help in repurposing drugs for the treatment of COVID-19.
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We discuss the integration of heterogeneous biomedical data to aid drug repositioning.
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The potential of 13 existing drugs to be repurposed for COVID-19 is backed up by the literature.
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A data-driven repurposing approach predicted 95% of the drugs tested in clinical trials.
Abstract
In the COVID-19 pandemic, drug repositioning has presented itself as an alternative to the time-consuming process of generating new drugs. This review describes a drug repurposing process that is based on a new data-driven approach: we put forward five information paths that associate COVID-19-related genes and COVID-19 symptoms with drugs that directly target these gene products, that target the symptoms or that treat diseases that are symptomatically or genetically similar to COVID-19. The intersection of the five information paths results in a list of 13 drugs that we suggest as potential candidates against COVID-19. In addition, we have found information in published studies and in clinical trials that support the therapeutic potential of the drugs in our final list.
