Through joint research, the research teams led by Dr. Seungtaek Kim of Institut Pasteur Korea (IPK) and Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST have identified potent COVID-19 therapeutic candidates including omipalisib.  

Applying the drug repurposing strategy, the joint research team screened more than 6,000 drugs, including a collection of FDA-approved drugs, for COVID-19 antiviral efficacy.
First, KAIST Professor Sang Yup Lee’s team used virtual drug screening technology to carry out a primary selection of candidate compounds. Then, Dr. Seungtaek Kim’s team at IPK screened the antiviral efficacy of the identified compounds against SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture experiments and carried out a secondary selection.
Dr. Kim's team evaluated and analyzed the efficacy of the candidate compounds by sequentially applying a research model established with monkey kidney cells (Vero cell line) and human lung cells (Calu-3 cell line) utilizing the screening platform operated in the Biosafety Level 3 lab at IPK.

The research results were published online on July 7^th in the international academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
 
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Drugs repurposed for COVID-19 by virtual screening of 6,218 drugs and cell-based assay
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/30/e2024302118.short