ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The impact of COVID-19 on public health has mandated an 'all hands on deck' scientific response. The current clinical study and basic research on COVID-19 are mainly based on existing publications or our knowledge of coronavirus. However, efficiently retrieval of accurate, relevant knowledge on COVID-19 can pose significant challenges for researchers. METHODS: To improve quality in accessing important literature findings, we developed a novel natural language processing (NLP) method to automatically recognize the associations among potential targeted host organ systems, associated clinical manifestations, and pathways. We further validated these associations through clinician experts' evaluations and prioritize candidate drug targets through bioinformatics network analysis. RESULTS: We found that the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a receptor that SARS-CoV-2 required for cell entry, is associated with cardiovascular and endocrine organ system and diseases. Furthermore, we found SARS-CoV-2 is associated with some important pathways such as IL-6, TNF-alpha, and IL-1 beta-induced dyslipidemia, which are related to inflammation, lipogenesis, and oxidative stress mechanisms, suggesting potential drug candidates. CONCLUSION: We prioritized the list of therapeutic targets involved in antiviral and immune modulating drugs for experimental validation, rendering it valuable during public health crises marked by stresses on clinical and research capacity. Our automatic intelligence pipeline also contributes to other novel and emerging disease management and treatments in the future.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , Knowledge Discovery , Natural Language Processing , Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A/metabolism , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
This paper introduces an engineering design thinking and making course that has been taught at Beijing Normal University since 2019. In its 2-year journey and iterations, both teachers and students learn to dance with ambiguity, collaborate in teams, build to think, and make ideas real. They embrace engineering design thinking and making and experience the maker culture of the China-US young maker competition in this 16-week semester-long course. This year because of the Covid-19, the innovative course changed to online teaching. The course focus on people’s basic needs during the Covid-19, including study, fitness, shopping, entertainments and long-distance relation-ships and communication with family members. Student teams collaborate online to solve the special challenges of Covid-19 in innovative ways and de-liver functional proof-of-concept prototypes along with in-depth documenta-tion that not only captures the essence of designs but the learnings that led to the ideas.