Rapid Drug Discovery for COVID19 – Application to Human Targets

Project Description

BERG is a clinical-stage, AI-powered biotechnology company taking a bold ‘Back to Biology™’ approach to healthcare. By leveraging our proprietary intelligence platform – Interrogative Biology®, our goal is to map disease and revolutionize treatments for patients around the world. BERG’s Interrogative Biology® platform is a human biology-based discovery engine for the identification of targets, associated biomarkers within network biology maps delineating disease specific novel and unexplored mechanism(s) underlying disease etiology. BERG’s human derived disease models comprise multi-matrix biospecimen collections from individuals, a model consisting of population cohorts of specific disease (being investigated) and corresponding non-disease controls. The biological samples are subject to comprehensive molecular profiling to generate individual/population bio-omic profiles. BERG’s proprietary Bayesian artificial intelligence analytics integrates individual bio-omic profiles with multi-variate phenotype/clinical datasets to generate disease specific models that are compared with the non-disease controls. Rapidity in the analysis of large multi-variate datasets comparing disease versus non-disease models generates a statistically curated rank ordered list of high priority targets and/or biomarkers. The list of high priority targets allows for rapid, parallel validation of multiple molecular hubs within the associated biological network to generate a short-list of targets with novel underlying biology and scientific rigor ready and primed for drug discovery and development activities. Thus, the BERG platform provides foundation for parallel development of multiple disease specific targets for therapeutic development and in the creation of product pipelines. The development of effective antiviral agents against Covid-19 is of global urgency. On January 10, 2020, the first whole-genome sequence of 2019-nCoV was released. Soon after, the WHO announced a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) for the Covid-19 outbreak. It is now urgent to develop small-molecule therapeutics for this disease. Most recently, BERG’s platform was utilized to generate a COVID19 disease model using viral titer as a primary hub influencing host proteins. Generation of this model resulted in the identification of known and novel targets within the human proteome with the potential to impact treatment paradigm(s) and outcomes in individuals with COVID19 infection. The targets identified within BERG’s COVID19 model represent high priority targets that require discovery of new chemical entities with the potential for drug development to treat COVID19 infections.