UCAM researchers are using supercomputing to search for a drug to cure coronavirus

In January, the BIO-HPC research group began a study with the Austrian company Innophore GmbH to identify potential drugs, having already carried out the initial screening.

Using several supercomputers ranked amongst the world’s top 100 most powerful, the BIO-HPC group is analysing thousands of molecules to predict which of them may be most effective against the target proteins being identified in the coronavirus.

“At a molecular level, we can recommend drugs, but it is the doctors who have to make the decision,” emphasises Horacio Pérez, principal investigator of the UCAM BIO-HPC team, which uses supercomputing to propose drugs that healthcare professionals can use to treat diseases. The research team, which also includes José Pedro Cerón-Carrasco, Jorge de la Peña-García, Antonio Jesús Banegas-Luna and Alfonso Pérez-Garrido, has been working on the COVID-19 coronavirus since January.

Pérez-Garrido explains that “in the calculations we have carried out, we have used an approach known as ‘repurposing’, which means that we are not proposing a molecule from scratch, but rather attempting to re-apply drugs that are already known in another context to see if they might work against a new disease, as is currently the case with the COVID-19 coronavirus.”

Advances in blood clotting and cancer

The BIO-HPC group has also been working alongside the Regional Blood Donation Centre on an international project funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities to identify new drugs that will enable blood clotting to be regulated more effectively and safely. It is also conducting research into the Zika virus in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong, as well as into rare diseases, cancer and other areas. Some of its findings are being published in high-impact international journals such as JACS and Nature Chemical Biology.