A PRIORITY INDEX SOLUTION TO CRITICAL COVID-19

An index for genetically informed therapeutic targets

At the heart of PIC²Target lies a genetically powered drug-target discovery engine designed to transform host genetic insights into a genetic target index.

The capacity to rediscover existing Covid-19 therapeutics enables identification of leading prioritised genes, and their molecular hallmarks (functions/pathways they participate in), their cellular context (the specific cell types they operate in), and their evolutionary history (origins/ancestors in which they first emerged).

An index for crosstalk-based repurposed drugs

The uniqueness of the PIC²Drug lies in its capacity to execute drug repurposing and removal analysis based on genes that mediate crosstalk among pathways.

For example, removal analysis on crosstalk genes identifies drug repurposing opportunities for clinically approved inhibitors of the JAK-STAT signaling. These drug candidates can be further investigated, either individually or in combination, for their potential in treating critical Covid-19. Supporting this are current interests in targeting this pathway, with several therapeutic agents currently undergoing phase-III clinical trials in disease.

A step-by-step reproducible protocol using an R package

In this demo, the latest critical Covid-19 GWAS summary-level data is used to generate both the target index PIC²Target and the drug index PIC²Drug.

Source codes are also made available and easily reproducible using an R package (PIC2).