An OpenData Portal to share SARS-CoV-2 drug repurposing data in real time

National Center For Advancing Translational Sciences

Investigators

Abstract

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, biomedical scientists around the world have mobilized to understand the disease and develop therapeutic interventions to mitigate its impact. Numerous drug repurposing and mechanistic screens have been undertaken against the virus, though the results of these studies are often shared incompletely or slowly. This collaborative NCATS team took a more open approach and chose to rapidly share their data and efforts with the world on an unprecedented timeline. By sharing their results in advance of any formal publications, this multidisciplinary team made the vision of the OpenData Portal a reality. These efforts selflessly provided a large foundation of SARS-CoV-2 research early in the pandemic, providing researchers across the globe with proof-of-concept data to help guide their hypotheses and nascent research on the virus. The Portal has helped set a new standard for data sharing and embodied the NCATS mission to accelerate research to aid patients more quickly. To date, OpenData Portal has shared primary data on more than 13 high-throughput SARS-CoV-2-related screens, encompassing more than half a million data points.