RESEARCHERS USING WORLD’S FASTEST COMPUTER TO FIND CORONAVIRUS CURE

In an effort to find a cure for the COVID-19 coronavirus, researchers are using the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the IBM-built Summit, to find potential compounds that could be used to fight the pandemic.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee are screening through more than 8,000 compounds to determine which ones can bind to a so-called S-protein spike. Viruses infect host cells when they inject them with a “spike” of the virus’s genetic material. If scientists find compounds that bind to the spike, they could potentially stop the virus from infecting host cells.

So far, the computer has identified 77 compounds that may potentially be used and has ranked them according to how likely they are to bind to the spike protein of the coronavirus. The research has been published in the journal ChemRxiv.

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