Network medicine framework for identifying drug-repurposing opportunities for COVID-19 | PNAS

Deisy Morselli Gysi, Ítalo do Valle, Marinka Zitnik, Asher Ameli, Xiao Gan, Onur Varol, Susan Dina Ghiassian, J. J. Patten, Robert A. Davey, Joseph Loscalzo, and Albert-László Barabási

PNAS May 11, 2021 118 (19) e2025581118;

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of prioritizing approved drugs to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. Here, we deployed algorithms relying on artificial intelligence, network diffusion, and network proximity to rank 6,340 drugs for their expected efficacy against SARS-CoV-2. We experimentally screened 918 drugs, allowing us to evaluate the performance of the existing drug-repurposing methodologies, and used a consensus algorithm to increase the accuracy of the predictions. Finally, we screened in human cells the top-ranked drugs, identifying six drugs that reduced viral infection, four of which could be repurposed to treat COVID-19. The developed strategy has significance beyond COVID-19, allowing us to identify drug-repurposing candidates for neglected diseases.

Read the full article at: www.pnas.org

CSS Senior Scientific Award 2021

The CSS promotes the Senior Scientific Award to recognize the scientific career of Complex Systems scholars. It is awarded once a year to members who have achieved outstanding results in complexity science in any of the areas representative of the CSS.

Read the full article at: cssociety.org

CSS Junior Scientific Award 2021

The CSS promotes the Junior Scientific Award to recognize the excellence in the scientific career of young researchers in Complex Systems. It is awarded once a year to a maximum of two young researchers (up to ten years after PhD completion) who have achieved outstanding results in complexity science in any of the areas representative of the CSS.

Read the full article at: cssociety.org

CSS Emerging Researcher Award

This year the CSS launches a new award. The CSS Emerging Researcher Award recognizes promising researchers in Complex Systems. It is awarded once a year to up to two researchers who have made outstanding first steps in the complexity science research in any of the areas representative of the CSS.

Read the full article at: cssociety.org

Synergetic Cities: Information, Steady State and Phase Transition. Implications to urban scaling, smart cities and planning

Hermann Haken, Juval Portugali

Four concepts make the title of this book: Synergetic cities which is a view on cites as complex systems from the perspective of Haken’s theory of synergetics; information, which is a view on cities as complex systems commencing from the perspective of information theory. Next come steady state and phase transition which are two central aspects of complex systems in general and of cities as complex systems. Our aim is to introduce and develop the above four notions and then to discuss their implication to three issues that stand at the core of current discourse on cities as complex systems: urban allometery (or scaling) and smart cities—both attract special attention in the discourse on cities of the last two decades, as part of the attempt to transform the study of cities into a science. The third issue, city planning, attempts to adapt the process of planning to the understanding, and reality, of cities as complex, adaptive self-organizing systems.

Book at: link.springer.com