Baricitinib is a drug typically prescribed to patients with aches and pains from rheumatoid arthritis. But it might also offer relief from something more. In recent weeks, researchers at London-based BenevolentAI have been exploring the use of existing drugs as treatments for Covid-19, the new strain of coronavirus that has had drastic repercussions on global markets and left thousands dead in its wake. Specifically, the British start-up has looked to artificial intelligence to crunch vast amounts of public data to find a drug that could be used to treat patients while a new vaccine is conjured. "Given the scale and rapid spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus… there is an immediate need for medicines that can help before a vaccine can be produced," BenevolentAI wrote in a paper in the Lancet, a medical journal.

The race to develop vaccines and treatments for the new coronavirus is a high-tech moonshot employing artificial intelligence, quantum physics, computational chemistry and cloud computing, according to one key researcher in China. "What we try to do is develop some very fundamental technologies which are essential to discovering treatment for the coronavirus," said Lipeng Lai, co-founder and head of AI research at XtalPi Inc., a pharmaceutical-technology company.

The World Health Organization believes Gilead Sciences Inc.'s remdesivir, a drug used to treat Ebola virus, might be effective against the new coronavirus, Dr. Lai noted. Chloroquine, used to prevent and treat malaria, also potentially could be useful, XtalPi computational research suggests. XtalPi is searching for other potential treatments and a vaccine. The company builds tools and platforms and conducts early-stage research that is carried further by pharmaceutical companies, according to communications director Ruyu Wang. It hopes the methods and workflows it developed for coronavirus research will help accelerate research in future pandemics.