Canadian Medical Company Taps LSU-Developed Artificial Intelligence for COVID-19 Treatments
June 05, 2020
Research Attracts Investment
By partnering with Skymount, a Calgary-based medical company that recently set up its first U.S. office in Baton Rouge, LSU will test new treatments for COVID-19 to help ease symptoms and lower the mortality rate. The treatments were found using an artificial intelligence tool known as DeepDrug™, which was developed at LSU.
“This is a major breakthrough,” said Zubin Kothawala, CEO of Skymount Medical. “DeepDrug™ has the power to perform 15 years of drug discovery and due diligence in 15 days and leads the pack in medical artificial intelligence in terms of accuracy, speed, and performance.”
The interdisciplinary LSU experts are also a current semi-finalist for the IBM Watson AI XPrize, a $5 million award for innovative teams using artificial intelligence to tackle global challenges
Artificial intelligence helps map known antiviral peptides (AVPs) to different cell mechanisms by analyzing protein-protein interactions. The AVPs are then ranked by how effectively they can slow the propagation of coronavirus in the human body.
– LSU DeepDrug™
“DeepDrug™ has the power to perform 15 years of drug discovery and due diligence in 15 days and leads the pack in medical AI in terms of accuracy, speed, and performance.”
Zubin Kothawala, Skymount Medical CEO