Abstract

A REVIEW ON POTENTIAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN DIAGNOSIS, DRUG DISCOVERY AND VACCINE DEVELOPMENT AGAINST COVID-19

Muskan Yadav, Anupriya Jain, NandiniKurmi, Pushpendra Kumar Khangar*

Adina Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, NH86A, Lahdara, Sagar, M.P. 470001

ABSTRACT

The past two decades were marked with the outbreaks of many viral diseases such as Chikungunya, Ebola, Zika, Nipah, H1N1, SARS, H7N9 Bird flu, and MERS. The world woke up to this decade with a new disease outbreak. An outbreak of a novel Corona virus emerged in Wuhan city in the Hubei province of China in December 2019. The main challenges in mitigating COVID-19 are effective vaccination, treatment, and agile containment strategies. In this review, we focus on the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in COVID-19 diagnosis, outcome prediction, drug discovery and vaccine development. A significant amount of new scientific research and data sharing is underway due to the pandemic which is still rapidly spreading. There is now a growing amount of corona virus related datasets as well as published papers that must be leveraged along with artificial intelligence (AI) to fight this pandemic by driving news approaches to drug discovery, vaccine development, and public awareness. With the help of big data, AI tries to mimic the cognitive capabilities of a human brain, such as problem-solving and learning abilities. Machine Learning (ML), a subset of AI, holds special promise for solving problems based on experiences gained from the curated data. Advances in AI methods have created an unprecedented opportunity for building agile surveillance systems using the deluge of real-time data generated within a short span of time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many reports have discussed the utility of AI approaches in prioritization, delivery, surveillance, and supply chain of drugs, vaccines, and non-pharmaceutical interventions. Drug discovery is not a trivial task and AI technologies like deep learning can help accelerate this process by helping predict which existing drugs, or brand-new drug-like molecules could treat COVID-19. AI techniques can also help disseminate vital information across the globe and reduce the spread of false information about COVID-19. The positive power and potential of AI must be harnessed in the fight to slow the spread of COVID-19 in order to save lives and limit the economic havoc due to this horrific disease.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, COVID-19, Diagnosis, Drug Discovery, Vaccine development.