Open science campaign discovers compound promising for COVID-19 cure

The COVID Moonshot, an open science campaign, has discovered a compound that is promising for blocking the protein that is essential for the replication of COVID-19 virus, Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) said in a statement on Friday.

A new report published in the journal Science on Friday offers detailed information about the specific compound that shows significant potential in inhibiting the replication of COVID-19, employing ways distinct from those of currently available drugs.

"On the basis of the results of a crystallographic fragment screen, we crowdsourced design ideas to progress from fragment to lead compounds. The crowdsourcing strategy yielded several key compounds along the optimization trajectory, including the starting compound of what became the primary lead series. Three additional chemically distinct lead series were also explored, spanning a diversity of chemotypes," said the researchers in the report.

A noncovalent, nonpeptidic inhibitor scaffold with lead-like properties has been discovered, which the researchers said is "differentiated from current main protease inhibitors."

The campaign aimed to allow pharmaceutical companies to transform compounds into generic drugs without patents, enabling them to be marketed at much-reduced prices compared to branded ones, thereby increasing the affordability of anti-COVID-19 drugs for low-income countries and populations, according to the WIS.

COVID Moonshot is a non-profit partnership of worldwide researchers formed in March 2020 to find a cure for the coronavirus.

The WIS statement noted that the discovery reflects the success of the open science research framework offered by COVID Moonshot, which promotes transparency, collaboration, and accessibility by openly sharing research outputs, data, methodologies, and tools.

(With input from Xinhua)