FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
What does ASAP stand for?
ASAP stands for the “AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform”, and highlights the central role that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) play, alongside computational chemistry, in accelerating structure-based drug discovery.
How can I stay up to date with ASAP activities and developments?
You can follow ASAP on twitter at @asap_discovery.
What is the origin of ASAP?
The origin of the ASAP Center is described in this news post.
What does ASAP plan to do?
You can find a detailed overview of planned ASAP activities here.
What viral targets will ASAP work on, and how much progress have you made?
We plan to post a list of all viral targets, along with all resources we make openly available to aid the global antiviral discovery community, on this website shortly.
You can find an overview of the progress made by the COVID Moonshot, our predecessor project, at the COVID Moonshot website.
How can I join or collaborate with ASAP?
If you’re interested in joining or collaborating with the ASAP Consortium, please contact PIs John Chodera (MSKCC) <john.chodera@choderalab.org>
, Alpha Lee (PostEra) <alpha.lee@postera.ai>
, and Ben Perry (DNDi) <bperry@dndi.org>
.
How is ASAP funded?
ASAP is currently funded by:
- Numerous discovery programs are funded by the National Institutes of Health grant number 1U19AI171399-01 via the Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) U19 Centers, part of the Antiviral Program for Pandemics
- The SARS-CoV-2 Mpro preclinical program directed by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative is funded by the Wellcome Trust via the World Health Organization (WHO) Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) grant 224021/Z/21/Z
Acknowledgments
In addition to the above funding, we are grateful to the following organizations for providing us with resources to pursue accelerated drug discovery for the public good:
- OpenEye Scientific // Cadence Molecular Sciences for granting us a license for the OpenEye Toolkits and the Orion Cloud Molecular Design Platform (see Press Release)
- Enamine, our steadfast chemical synthesis partner—a Contract Research Organization (CRO) with an unmatched chemical building block library
- Bienta—a Contract Research Organization (CRO) co-localized with Enamine that provides our Tier 1 ADMET and onsite assay services