AI invents new 'recipes' for potential COVID-19 drugs

If umifenovir, a broad-spectrum antiviral, can fight COVID-19, then computer-designed synthetic routes could make it easy and cheap to produce. Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation. As scientists uncover drugs that can treat coronavirus infections, demand will almost certainly outstrip supplies--as is already happening with the antiviral remdesivir. To prevent shortages, researchers have come up with a new way to design synthetic routes to drugs now being tested in some COVID-19 clinical trials, using artificial intelligence (AI) software. The AI-planned new recipes--for 11 medicines so far--could help manufacturers produce medications whose syntheses are tightly held trade secrets.