You are currently viewing 01/07/2020 – AI3SD Online Seminar Series: Drug Repositioning for COVID-19 – Professor John Overington

01/07/2020 – AI3SD Online Seminar Series: Drug Repositioning for COVID-19 – Professor John Overington

Interview: Dr Wendy Warr interviewed John prior to this seminar. This interview can be found here: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/441804/

Abstract: Pandemics, such as Covid-19. are by definition essentially unanticipatable and rapid onset. Features unfortunately incompatible with current industry capabilities in drug discovery. This has led to a large number of studies, both theoretical and experimental to reposition, or reuse an existing drug for Covid-19 therapy. There are some general patterns of success in historical repositioning that point to the most likely strategies for drug repositioning, and also, following some specific data gathering and curation, to point towards specific actionable activities for Covid-19. The presentation will briefly overview drug repositioning as a general strategy, and then the focussed application of core concepts towards the treatment of Covid-19. 

Biography: John has had extensive experience in technology driven drug discovery. In his work as CIO at the Medicine Discovery Catapult he leads research projects for developing and applying informatics-based approaches for drug discovery. Prior to this he worked for Benevolent AI where he was involved in the development of novel data extraction and integration strategies, integrating deep learning and other Artificial Intelligence approaches to drug target validation and drug optimisation.

DOI Link 

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