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COVID19: The search for the virus vulnerability


​At Ariel Fernandez Consultancy we strive to identify virus vulnerabilities that may be exploited in targeted therapies to combat COVID19. Our biophysical approach hinges on one simple pivotal idea put forth at the Daruma Institute, a branch of Ariel Fernandez Consultancy devoted to Artificial Intelligence in pharmaceutical research. The idea has been articulated by Ariel Fernandez and may be delineated as follows: The culprit of COVID19, SARS-CoV-2, cannot be a final perfected product because there is evidence of evolutionary change. If the virus mutates and some of the mutations become dominant, this is because the virus still needs to make up for deficiencies, and in so doing, it finds fitness advantages. Hence there are vulnerabilities in the virus, and we must identify them to steer the engineering of molecular targeted therapies. In our search for vulnerabilities in SARS-CoV-2 we will thus let the mutational history of the virus serve as guidance, assessing the structural impact of each dominant mutation in the recent history of the COVID19 pandemic.

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An amplification of this idea may be found in the video "Biophysicist Ariel Fernandez on COVID19".


A more rigorous presentation may be found at "Ariel Fernandez identifies the Achilles' heel of COVID19". 

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00114

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Illlustrative publications on COVID19 from the Daruma Institute:


        https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsmedchemlett.0c00410



 




​​​ARIEL FERNAN​DEZ​ 

biotechnology and Pharmaceutics INNOVATION