Artificial intelligence methods to repurpose and discover new drugs to fight the Coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic

The Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic struck the world at the end of 2019 and, as of 2021, there are no specific drugs available against the causative agent, the severe acute respiratory syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). From the onset of the pandemic, researchers have been trying to find drugs among the current therapeutic arsenal that could target crucial viral function, and many of these efforts resulted in clinical trials to repurpose a drug for this new indication. In this scenario, artificial intelligence (AI) is of fundamental importance, allowing academia and pharmaceutical companies to accelerate the discovery of biochemical insights from the chemical and biological information available in literature databases. This chapter will cover some AI methods that are being explored to repurpose drugs against SARS-CoV-2. It will be outlined how these methods work followed by a discussion of selected examples applying them to identify promising drugs.