Biovista Harnesses New Kinds of Augmented and Artificial Intelligence to Address COVID-19

Bioscience Firm Applies AI and Data Science to Identify Existing Drugs Atozet and Cablivi as Potentially Effective Therapies for Blood Clots and Inflammation Caused by COVID-19

Two newly repositioned drugs with the potential to combat key symptoms of COVID-19 were announced by Biovista, an AI-driven bioscience firm that has been successfully repositioning drugs for over a decade. Biovista identified Cablivi and Atozet as particularly suited to target specific aspects of blood clotting and inflammation in the context of COVID-19.

This follows the strong mechanistic rationale Biovista released in March, suggesting Aprotinin and Irbesartan as potential COVID-19 treatments to reduce the effects of the cytokine storm as well as helping reduce viral loads.

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“We continue to focus on possible solutions for key complications, or sequelae, of COVID-19,” said Dr. Aris Persidis, president and co-founder of Biovista. “With our latest rolling drug repositioning update, we address the micro-blood clots in the lungs and hearts of COVID-19 patients that can have devastating consequences, and suggest treatments.”

As scientists around the globe race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, public health experts caution it will likely take years to develop and administer. In the meantime, as the virus continues to spread, Biovista is applying new types of artificial intelligence to find treatments that will mitigate disease complications that arise post-infection.

Biovista’s AI platform, Project Prodigy, maps all known drugs against every possible mechanism in which the COVID-19 virus operates and causes complications. “Our workflow is unique in terms of its massive coverage,” said Dr. Eftychia Lekka, senior investigator, drug discovery for Biovista. “We will continue to update and share possible therapies with the world until effective treatments are found and developed.”

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Treating COVID-19 has been especially difficult because it causes multiple complications that affect nearly every organ system in the body – from muscles and fibromyalgia, to kidney and pancreatic function, to cardiopulmonary issues, hyper-inflammation, and even neurological issues.

“Typical machine learning AIs aren’t designed for something like Covid-19, where what happens next is unknown,” Dr. Persidis said. “Biovista’s Project Prodigy is a game-changer AI because it is designed to go where matching and classifying AIs stop. Project Prodigy recombines all known data points to build entirely new scenarios, and that’s our edge.”

In addition to proposing possible treatments for further study, Biovista’s AI is supporting the global response to COVID-19 and other deadly diseases. The firm has made portions of Project Prodigy publicly accessible through their data and hypothesis exploration tool called VIZIT. In June alone, VIZIT provided answers to over 20,000 unique searches made by scientists and drug developers in over 75 countries.

“Our team decided to make key parts of our AI open-access, to share the potential of AI discovery with colleagues around the world. Using new types of accessible AI and billions of data points, we hope to improve patient health and safety around the globe during this pandemic and beyond,” added Dr. Persidis.

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