Along with the massive spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to find an effective drug or vaccine are also increasing. The most powerful computer in the world from IBM significantly helped to find a total of 77 potential substances that could stop the multiplication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The super-powerful machine is called Summit, and the scientists set it the task of figuring out through simulations which substances could block the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
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This week, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory published in ChemRxiv the results of several thousand simulations performed on IBM's Summit computer. The Summit computer was tasked with finding substances that could theoretically coat the protein spike at the tip of the virus. It is with the help of the host cells at the tip of this tip that the insidious virus infects the host cells. Thanks to a Chinese study from this January, scientists first managed to create a model of the protein tip of the virus. The Summit computer then automatically simulated the reactions of individual substances. From a total of eight thousand substances, Summit managed to select 77 small molecules, which it then sorted according to potential. The scientists also plan to upload additional simulations to the Summit based on the latest findings about the virus. After that, a series of tests will follow, the aim of which will be to find out which substances will be the most effective in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. However, the director of the Oak Ridge Laboratory Center, Jeremy Smith, warns the public that the results of the simulations do not yet mean that a cure for the coronavirus has been invented. At the same time, he adds that he and his team firmly hope that the conclusions from the simulations will provide scientists with a basis for further investigation of active substances.
The origins of IBM's Summit computer date back to 2014, when its construction was commissioned by the American miniThe power of the computer reaches 200 petaflops - in a single second, this super-powerful machine is capable of performing up to 200 quadrillion operations. The power of the Summit computer has been used in the past, for example, to develop a method for recognizing Alzheimer's disease, to predict the weather associated with climate change, or to investigate the possibilities of landing on the moon. The analysis of substances that could be effective against SARS-CoV-2 took Summit only two days.
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