Action participants contribute to first online tool for drug repurposing prediction against SARS-CoV-2

29/04/2020

OpenMultiMed Action member, Prof. Jan Baumbach, and his lab team at the Technical University of Munich have developed the tool with the help of Prof. Harald Schmidt, Chair of the Action, and of two other researchers in the network.

CoVex is the first online platform for SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1 host interactome exploration and drug identification. This user-friendly tool shows how human and viral proteins interact and implements systems medicine algorithms for network-based prediction of drugs against SARS-CoV-2 and similar viruses. In other words, CoVex gives the science community direct access to basic network medicine algorithms integrating drug-protein-virus interactions.

Prof. Jan Baumbach, core member of Open Multiscale Systems Medicine (OpenMultiMed) Action, and his team at the Experimental Bioinformatics lab of the Technical University of Munich, developed CoVex in a 10-day hackathon. Prof. Harald Schmidt, Chair of OpenMultiMed, provided help as well as two researchers that undertook a short-term scientific mission at Prof. Baumbach’s lab.

The tool is available in open source and the development process and functionalities are documented here.