AI-based drug discovery and development company Innoplexus AG on Thursday provided an update of the first results from its artificial intelligence enabled search for a COVID-19 antiviral treatment.

The company also said it is offering its full range of tools free of charge to biotech and pharma companies working on treatments for COVID-19.

Innoplexus began by scanning data on previously approved drugs for off-label potential in treating COVID-19, using its proprietary AI and big data platform to generate actionable insights from hundreds of terabytes of structured and unstructured public data, drawing from sources ranging from private research databases to social media.

The AI platform was used to analyse data coming from expression data, molecular pathways, drug binding affinities and published clinical trials.

Among the potential stand-alone treatment options identified was Hydroxychloroquine, a derivative of Chloroquine that has both antimalarial and anti-inflammatory activities.

The findings also suggest that a combination of Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine with several previously approved drugs might yield better results than any drug administered alone. For example, Tocilizumab, a drug approved to treat severe rheumatoid arthritis, is thought to interrupt the process of 'cytokine release syndrome' (CRS), a form of serious inflammatory response that can occur as a complication of COVID-19.

Chloroquine combined with Remdesivir, an antiviral drug developed by Gilead to treat Ebola, might be effective. And Hydroxychloroquine combined with Clarithromycin or Plerixafor, a semisynthetic macrolide antibiotic derived from erythromycin and an antiretroviral for HIV respectively, could be an option to be evaluated further.

Innoplexus is in the process of validating all of these combinations in vitro and in vivo studies.