ARISCIENCE Collaboration on SARS-CoV-2 Research

On August 6, 2020 ARIScience and the University of North Dakota signed a research collaboration agreement on the use of the UND Computational Research Center’s (UND CRC) high performance computing (HPC) system to further ARIScience’s SARS-CoV-2 protein interruption research. As part of the collaboration ARIScience will used UND CRC’s Talon HPC cluster and exchanged information with UND on efficient use of HPC to advance biological research.

“Massachusetts-based biotech company called ARIScience has used supercomputers to identify existing drugs able to break up SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – at the molecular level. Thanks to computer simulations, followed by validation through statistical analysis on a 1.5MM patient dataset, the researchers have found four FDA-approved drugs that could be repurposed for COVID-19.

These drugs are Metformin, Hydrochlorothiazide, Triamcinolone and Amoxicillin. They could reduce COVID-19 mortality odds by 25 percent, says the lead researcher, Joy Alamgir. The results are currently undergoing a peer review process.

While the researchers started by using their own supercomputing cluster, they quickly realized that they needed additional computing resources. They then applied for extra resources via the COVID-19 HPC Consortium – and were granted access to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).

Separately they requested access to University of North Dakota, the University of Maine System and Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) centers – all of whom granted access to their supercomputing systems. ‘We would not have completed the simulations ourselves, just because of the sheer computing power needed by our novel algorithms,’ says Alamgir.”