COVID-19: Crucial step towards vaccine powered by AI supercomputer

The world's fastest supercomputer has identified chemicals that could curb the widespread of coronavirus outbreak by finding it's cure, according to experts.

IBM's supercomputer known as Summit is the world's fastest supercomputer and is equipped with the "brain of Artificial Intelligence".

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It ran thousands of simulations of over 8,000 compounds to analyze which drug compounds might effectively stop the virus from infecting host cells and identified 77 chemicals of such drug compounds that could be effective.

Viruses infect host cells by injecting them with a ''spike''of genetic material.

Summit has found chemicals that could block that process.Experts believe it is a crucial step towards a vaccine.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory published their findings in the journal ChemRxiv.

''Our results don’t mean that we have found a cure or treatment for the coronavirus. But the findings could inform future studies on how to create the most effective coronavirus vaccine,'' said Jeremy Smith, director of the University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Molecular Biophysics.

The team will run the simulations on Summit again, using a more accurate model of the coronavirus’ spike that was published this month.

Experimental studies will be required to prove which chemicals work best.

The supercomputer was commissioned by the US Department of Energy in 2014 to help solve the world’s problems.