AI Approach to Curing Deformed wing virus in Honey Bees

The primary challenge of anti-viral drug discovery in honey bees is the small number ofcompounds that can be screened. Drug hunters have so far screened maybe 20 candidates forDeformed wing virus. This number contrasts with the accepted principle of drug discovery thatdrugs are rare and discovery is unpredictable. Finding even one drug out of many thousands ofcompounds is considered a stroke of good fortune.There is now the opportunity to obliterate this barrier with an artificial intelligence approach thatcan identify "active" hit compounds at a rate up to 10000X higher than the physical high- throughput screening methods it augments. The plan is for Atomwise (atomwise.com SanFrancisco CA) to apply its artificial intelligence algorithms 10 million compound library and drugdiscovery expertise to Deformed wing virus. This approach is enabled by the USDA Bee ResearchLab (Beltsville MD) which has led Deformed wing virus gene sequence and life cycle discoveryefforts and has established efficient live honey bee physical drug screen. Granite Point Ventures(granitepv.com Greenbelt MD) establishing a Cooperative Research and Development Agreementwith the Bee Research Lab leads the SBIR effort with its published honey bee drug discoveryinterest expertise in SBIR/STTR achievement project planning and commercialization ofuniversity and federal technologies.The anticipated result of Phase I is AtomNet virtual screening of up to 10 million compoundsagainst at least one treatable part of the Deformed wing virus capsid 3-D structure. We anticipatethe above activities will identify by artificial intelligence up to 70 small chemical compounds ofhigh affinity for Deformed wing virus. This Phase I activity enables the larger Phase II effort ofscreening these 70 compounds in live infected bees for safety and efficacy at the Bee ResearchLab.