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Exscalate4Cov
Exscalate4Cov was a Public–private partnership, public-private consortium supported by the Horizon Europe program from the European Union, aimed at leveraging high-performance computing (HPC) as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. The project utilized high-throughput, extreme-scale, computer-aided drug design software to conduct experiments. The Exsclate4Cov project, which stands for ''EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns for Corona Virus'', was coordinated by Dompé Farmaceutici and involved 17 participants. It was part of the Horizon 2020 ''SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Health, demographic change and well-being'' founding funding''.'' The project conducted one of the largest virtual screening and drug repositioning experiments, identifying a potentially effective molecule against SARS-CoV-2. Context Background Drug discovery can be a long and costly process, often taking years and requiring substantial financial investment. Pharmaceutical companies have large dat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drug Repositioning
Drug repositioning (also called drug repurposing) involves the investigation of existing drugs for new therapeutic purposes. Repurposing achievements Repurposing generics can have groundbreaking effects for patients: 35% of 'transformative' drugs approved by the US FDA are repurposed products. Repurposing is especially relevant for rare or neglected diseases. A number of successes have been achieved, the foremost including sildenafil (Viagra) for erectile dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension and thalidomide for leprosy and multiple myeloma. Clinical trials have been performed on posaconazole and ravuconazole for Chagas disease. Other antifungal agents clotrimazole and ketoconazole have been investigated for anti- trypanosome therapy. Successful repositioning of antimicrobials has led to the discovery of broad-spectrum therapeutics, which are effective against multiple infection types. Strategy Drug repositioning is a "universal strategy" for neglected diseases due to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horizon 2020
The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the European Research Area (ERA). Starting in 2014, the funding programmes were named Horizon. The funding programmes began in 1984 and continue to the present day. The most recent programme, Horizon Europe, has a budget of 95.5 billion Euros to be distributed over 7 years. The specific objectives and actions vary between funding periods. In FP6 and FP7, focus was on technological research. In Horizon 2020, the focus was on innovation, delivering economic growth faster, and delivering solutions to end users that are often governmental agencies. Background Conducting European research policies and implementing European research programmes is an obligation under the Amsterdam Treaty, which includes a chapter on research and technological developme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated population of over 449million as of 2024. The EU is often described as a ''sui generis'' political entity combining characteristics of both a federation and a confederation. Containing 5.5% of the world population in 2023, EU member states generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around €17.935 trillion in 2024, accounting for approximately one sixth of global economic output. Its cornerstone, the European Union Customs Union, Customs Union, paved the way to establishing European Single Market, an internal single market based on standardised European Union law, legal framework and legislation that applies in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where the states ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protein Receptor
In biochemistry and pharmacology, receptors are chemical structures, composed of protein, that receive and transduce signals that may be integrated into biological systems. These signals are typically chemical messengers which bind to a receptor and produce physiological responses, such as a change in the electrical activity of a cell. For example, GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, inhibits electrical activity of neurons by binding to GABA receptors. There are three main ways the action of the receptor can be classified: relay of signal, amplification, or integration. Relaying sends the signal onward, amplification increases the effect of a single ligand, and integration allows the signal to be incorporated into another biochemical pathway. Receptor proteins can be classified by their location. Cell surface receptors, also known as transmembrane receptors, include ligand-gated ion channels, G protein-coupled receptors, and enzyme-linked hormone receptors. Intracellular re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supercomputing
A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). Since 2022, supercomputers have existed which can perform over 1018 FLOPS, so called Exascale computing, exascale supercomputers. For comparison, a desktop computer has performance in the range of hundreds of gigaFLOPS (1011) to tens of teraFLOPS (1013). Since November 2017, all of the TOP500, world's fastest 500 supercomputers run on Linux-based operating systems. Additional research is being conducted in the United States, the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, and China to build faster, more powerful and technologically superior exascale supercomputers. Supercomputers play an important role in the field of computational science, and are used for a wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry is a medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or self-administered by) patients for curing or preventing disease or for alleviating symptoms of illness or injury. Pharmaceutical companies may deal in generic drugs, branded drugs, or both, in different contexts. Generic materials are without the involvement of intellectual property, whereas branded materials are protected by chemical patents. The industry's various subdivisions include distinct areas, such as manufacturing biologics and total synthesis. The industry is subject to a variety of laws and regulations that govern the patenting, efficacy testing, safety evaluation, and marketing of these drugs. The global pharmaceutical market produced treatments worth a total of $1,228.45 billion in 2020. The sector showed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.8% in 2021, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CINECA
Cineca is a non-profit consortium, made up of 69 Italian universities, 27 national public research centres, the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research (MUR) and the Italian Ministry of Education (MI), and was established in 1969 in Casalecchio di Reno, Bologna. It is the most powerful supercomputing centre for scientific research in Italy, as stated in the TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world: Marconi100, is ranked at the 18th position of the list as of November 2021, with about 30 P/FLOPS. The consortium's institutional mission is to support the Italian scientific community through supercomputing and scientific visualisation tools. Since the end of the 1980s, Cineca has broadened the scope of its mission by embracing other IT sectors, developing management and administrative services for universities and designing ICT systems for the exchange of information between the MIUR and the Italian national academic system. The consortium is also strongl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zika Virus
Zika virus (ZIKV; pronounced or ) is a member of the virus family ''Flaviviridae''. It is spread by daytime-active ''Aedes'' mosquitoes, such as '' A. aegypti'' and '' A. albopictus''. Its name comes from the Ziika Forest of Uganda, where the virus was first isolated in 1947. Zika virus shares a genus with the dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile viruses. Since the 1950s, it has been known to occur within a narrow equatorial belt from Africa to Asia. From 2007 to , the virus spread eastward, across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas, leading to the 2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic. The infection, known as Zika fever or Zika virus disease, often causes no or only mild symptoms, similar to a very mild form of dengue fever. While there is no specific treatment, paracetamol (acetaminophen) and rest may help with the symptoms. Zika can spread from a pregnant woman to her baby. This can result in microcephaly, severe brain malformations, and other b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM Blue Gene P Supercomputer
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries; for 29 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2021, it held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business. IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems. It was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924 and soon became the leading manufacturer of Tabulating machine, punch-card tabulating systems. During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe, exemplified by the IBM System/360, System/360 and its successors, wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binding Affinity
In biochemistry and pharmacology, a ligand is a substance that forms a complex with a biomolecule to serve a biological purpose. The etymology stems from Latin ''ligare'', which means 'to bind'. In protein-ligand binding, the ligand is usually a molecule which produces a signal by binding to a site on a target protein. The binding typically results in a change of conformational isomerism (conformation) of the target protein. In DNA-ligand binding studies, the ligand can be a small molecule, ion, or protein which binds to the DNA double helix. The relationship between ligand and binding partner is a function of charge, hydrophobicity, and molecular structure. Binding occurs by intermolecular forces, such as ionic bonds, hydrogen bonds and Van der Waals forces. The association or docking is actually reversible through dissociation. Measurably irreversible covalent bonding between a ligand and target molecule is atypical in biological systems. In contrast to the def ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). Since 2022, supercomputers have existed which can perform over 1018 FLOPS, so called Exascale computing, exascale supercomputers. For comparison, a desktop computer has performance in the range of hundreds of gigaFLOPS (1011) to tens of teraFLOPS (1013). Since November 2017, all of the TOP500, world's fastest 500 supercomputers run on Linux-based operating systems. Additional research is being conducted in the United States, the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, and China to build faster, more powerful and technologically superior exascale supercomputers. Supercomputers play an important role in the field of computational science, and are used for a wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clinical Trial
Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human subject research, human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, pharmaceutical drug, drugs, medical nutrition therapy, dietary choices, dietary supplements, and medical devices) and known interventions that warrant further study and comparison. Clinical trials generate data on dosage, safety and efficacy. They are conducted only after they have received institutional review board, health authority/ethics committee approval in the country where approval of the therapy is sought. These authorities are responsible for vetting the risk/benefit ratio of the trial—their approval does not mean the therapy is 'safe' or effective, only that the trial may be conducted. Depending on product type and development stage, investigators initially enroll volunteers or patients into small Pilot experiment, pi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
