Anti-COVID19 Drug Discovery Project Supported by Free Tencent Cloud Supercomputing
– Collaboration between M.U.S.T. and Tencent Quantum Lab
The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated many researches around the world to develop Anti-COVID 19 vaccines and drugs. The traditional lab-based drug R&D takes a long time, human and financial resources to screen and run bio-test on thousands of compounds. In contrast, using high-performance computing (HPC) and supercomputing technology in high throughput virtual screening of drugs can solve these problems in a short run and helps to identify potential candidate compounds that can inhibit the functions of the proteins in virus replication and infection. These compounds can be studied for the further antiviral activity testing and evaluation.
Anti-COVID 19 candidate compound and its binding mode to the target obtained from computer screening
As the number of compounds used in the virtual screening increases, a more advanced computing technology is needed for virtual screening. To process and store massive data generated during the screening, Chair Prof. Liu Liang, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and President of M.U.S.T, Prof. Yao Xiaojun and their team from State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine (M.U.S.T.) (SKL) has collaborated with Tencent Quantum Lab in a new research project, using virtual screening to find anti-COVID 19 hit compounds with the help of Tencent cloud computing.
To run this project, a high-performance computing account was set up and offered by Tencent Cloud, providing free cloud space, CPU computing resources and cloud computing power at about 10000 cores. It will help to screen anti-COVID 19 hit compounds targeting important proteins in virus replication and infection. Supported by Tencent Cloud’s high-performance computing and massive cloud storage, hundreds of millions of compounds can be screened in a shorter period of time. This project supported by Tencent Cloud has also received support (endorsement/aid/assistance) from the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund（0055/2020/A, 0057/2020/A, 0059/2020/A）.
For SKL, it aims to be an international center for quality research and discovering novel drugs from Chinese medicines. It is strongly striving for conducting original innovative researches, acquiring intellectual properties, nurturing talented young scientists for Chinese medicine research, and expanding high-level international academic collaboration as its goals. Synergistic applications of the multi-disciplinary and cutting-edge technologies are particularly encouraged so as to establish the most innovative and common scientific technological platforms for quality research of Chinese medicines and new drug discovery. For Tencent Quantum Lab, it is dedicated to promoting fundamental science and technology R&D in quantum computing and developing potential applications of information processing, drug discovery and novel material designs.
Tencent will continue to maintain its lead in science and technology, and support scientific research institutions with its powerful cloud computing in the battle against COVID-19.
