One of the most powerful intelligent supercomputing platforms in the world is Italian-powered.

The features achieved by our EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns, EXSCALATE, represent a new record in this field: a "chemical library" of 500 billion molecules, up to 30 biological targets evaluated simultaneously, with a processing capacity of more than 3 million molecules a second and a screening cost for 1 billion molecules equivalent to 4,000 euro.

During Covid-19 pandemic, we don't rest. Exscalate becomes the core of a European project to defeat Coronavirus. Exscalate4CoV (E4C), the public-private consortium, backed by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 for projects to counter the pandemic and improve the management and care of patients.

E4C aims at leveraging the EU's supercomputing resources, coupling them with some of the continent's best life-science research labs to counter international pandemics faster and more efficiently.

The E4C consortium, coordinated by Dompé farmaceutici, is composed of 18 institutions from seven European countries: Politecnico di Milano (Dept. of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering), Consorzio Interuniversitario CINECA (Supercomputing Innovation and Applications), Università degli Studi di Milano (Pharmaceutical science Department), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, International Institute Of Molecular And Cell Biology In Warsaw (LIMCB), Electra Italian Crystallographic Association, Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Bsc Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Università Federico II di Napoli, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Department of Applied Physics), Associazione BigData, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Istituto nazionale per le malattie infettive Lazzaro Spallanzani and Chelonia Applied Science.

The aim of E4C is twofold, identify molecules capable of targeting the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and develop a tool effective for countering future pandemics to be consolidated over time.