The US Department of Energy recently announced it would turn the massive computing power of its system toward COVID-19, the pandemic illness that has affected hundreds of thousands, and killed over 13,000 people all over the world.
The machine, according to recent reports, has been, munching the numbers, and now, it has found 77 chemical compounds that could contribute to the prevention of the killer virus.
Summit is considered as the most dominant "supercomputer on Earth by a huge margin," and it is the third most efficient in energy consumption, as well. Relatively, it utilizes "10MW or power to retain its 9,216 POWER9 22-core CPUs, and 27,648 Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs humming."
In addition, Summit has the hypothetical highest performance of more than200 petaflops, not to mention, having presented 148.6 petaflops being tested while going through operations at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Summit's Target
The target of the massive computing power of Summit is a particular protein on the virus particle's surface. Similar to the other viruses, like the SARS-Cov-2, in particular, should infect cells to duplicate itself. More so, it does that with the Spike protein's help. These molecules on the virus' surface are associated with the "angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors on human cells," letting the infection inject its genome and takeover cellular machinery.
Essentially, Summit has operated replications on over 8,000 compounds, looking for molecules that can have the virus activated. In addition, early results which Summit presented, have determined 77 compounds that can bind to the Spike protein, stopping it from binding to human cells. Regrettably, though, Summit cannot develop a treatment solely by itself.
All that the processing power is most efficient is at mimicking molecular interactions, yet not ideal for the nuanced procedure of clinical assessment. What's certain though, is that the 77 molecules have a great chance of stopping the Spike protein from binding with cells. More so, it remains unknown if the compounds identified by Summit are safe to apply in humans.
What Needs to be Done
There is a need for the medical experts to thoroughly assess the compounds which the IBM supercomputers found to fight COVID-19, and conduct tests in the laboratory, which may ultimately result in clinical testing with humans for subjects. This is only a part of the initiatives to slow the widespread COVID-19. Relatively, studies about the vaccine are different from this one.
Specifically, a vaccine can prevent infections from occurring at all. However, a treatment based on the work of Summit, reports indicated, could help ease the COVID-19 symptoms and improve the survival rates. Unfortunately, though, vaccines are quite more challenging to develop.
While there are still more improvements needed, the team of researchers is set to run the same simulations on Summit once more. This will be done through the use of a more accurate framework of the COVID-19's spike, published early this month.
In relation to this, the University of Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Molecular Biophysics director, Jeremy Smith said in a statement that their results do not necessarily mean, they've already discovered the treatment of cure for the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, he added, the findings can inform studies in the future. He also said, only then, they'll know if any of the data would exhibit the characteristics required to ease the infection.
