The COVID-19 PHARMACOME: Rational Selection of Drug Repurposing Candidates from Multimodal Knowledge Harmonization

Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has challenged researchers at a global scale. The scientific community’s massive response has resulted in a flood of experiments, analyses, hypotheses, and publications, especially in the field drug repurposing. However, many of the proposed therapeutic compounds obtained from SARS-CoV-2 specific assays are not in agreement and thus demonstrate the need for a singular source of COVID-19 related information from which a rational selection of drug repurposing candidates can be made. In this paper, we present the COVID-19 PHARMACOME, a comprehensive drug-target-mechanism graph generated from a compilation of several disease maps and experimental data focused on SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 pathophysiology. By applying a systematic approach, we were able to predict the effect of drug pairs on SARS-CoV-2 infection. Experimental validation of our results demonstrate that our graph can be used to not only explore the involved mechanistic pathways, but also to identify novel combinations of drug repurposing candidates.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
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