Hong Kong-based biotechnology company Insilico Medicine and United States-based Westlake Pharma announced on Monday that they have entered into a strategic collaboration aimed at jointly developing small-molecule drugs for Novel Coronavirus.

The collaboration is based on the anti-COVID-19 drug R&D project by Westlake Pharma that is intended to produce broad-spectrum small molecule inhibitor drugs for key enzymes of coronavirus and which has achieved positive results in the preliminary stage.

Under the collaboration, both firms are to integrate the advantages of Insilico Medicine's AI-powered platforms for drug R&D, and further use interdisciplinary molecular design methods such as artificial intelligence, computer simulation and pharmacodynamic to design, synthesise and optimise novel selective small molecule inhibitors to expedite the advancement of pre-clinical and clinical research on the anti-COVID-19 project.