Dec 31, 2020 2:00pm An artificial-intelligence-based drug screening effort identified the lymphoma chemotherapy Folotyn (pralatrexate) as a potential treatment for COVID-19. (MF3d/Getty Images)
During a public health emergency, repurposing existing medicines is considered to be a fast route to potential cures, so several companies and academic groups have spent much of the last year looking for COVID-19 remedies in already marketed drugs. Now, a research team from China has identified an approved chemotherapy drug as a potential coronavirus treatment.
By using a combination of computational screening tools, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) showed that Acrotech Biopharma’s Folotyn (pralatrexate), a chemotherapy originally developed to treat lymphoma, could be a potent remedy against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus behind COVID-19.