We need a Big Data effort to find a COVID-19 cure, says pioneering geneticist
Famed French researcher Daniel Cohen, head of drug developer Pharnext, has a short list of 97 drugs that have been through some clinical testing that could play a role in a vaccine for COVID-19. To move things forward, the entire world needs to get together and share medical data on COVID-19 patients so the clues can be systematically studied.
"I'm an optimist," says Daniel Cohen, a legendary French scientist, "If we can make this combined, coordinated effort, not just our laboratory, but all scientists working, worldwide, then, yes, I'm optimistic we can find a solution."
From cancelled conferences to disrupted supply chains, not a corner of the global economy is immune to the spread of COVID-19.
Cohen was talking about patients with COVID-19, the disease that results from the SARS-CoV2 virus, a disease that has engulfed the world's energy and attention.
Cohen, 69, inaugurated the era of "Big Data" in the life sciences at the end of the 1980s, leading the effort then that produced the first "map" of the human genome.
As with the human genome project, where world leaders joined with scientists to generate funds for laboratories that shared information, Cohen thinks the world needs to share patient data from COVID-19 on a massive scale, including symptoms, medical history, and drugs the patients are on.
"We must have a coordinated effort to mutualize COVID-19 medical records, including records of all the medications being given to patients," said Cohen, "to analyze, with artificial intelligence tools, the influence, positive or negative, of their conditions, and their drugs, on this disease."
Cohen spoke to ZDNet by phone on Sunday from Paris, where he is chief executive of development-stage drug maker Pharnext. The context was Cohen's announcement Monday that his Pharnext team has come up with 97 drugs that have been through various stages of clinical testing, that might play a role in an eventual vaccine for COVID-19.
"Might" is the operative word. There is substantial complexity in the operation of the disease. It is widely known that primarily, but not exclusively, those dying are those who are older and who have "co-morbidities," pre-existing conditions that seem to become aggravated by the illness. The most prominent co-morbidities include hypertension, diabetes, cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases.
There's a mystery as to why those conditions seem to make patients more susceptible. Is there an underlying "confounder," asks Cohen, a condition that produces both hypertension, say, and susceptibility to the virus.
"Let's keep in mind that there are multiple potential other reasons for this comorbidity," says Cohen. "Organs from aged patients with diabetes or hypertension are often already damaged, therefore, COVID-19 might simply accelerate that degradation."