Finding new diseases for known cures

Posted by ljmacphee on September 14, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news |

The cure for an emerging outbreak may already be in your medicine cabinet.

And with an artificial intelligence computer program he’s creating, a Canadian researcher is honing in on that link.

“By the time (an outbreak) occurs it’s already too late to create a new drug from the ground up,” says University of British Columbia chemist Artem Cherkasov.

“The idea is when a new infection comes in or gets noticed, to use some of the existing substances and try them against the virus or pathogen.”

. . .

He says there are untold numbers of drugs on the market that may have more than one pharmaceutical function. His program aims to identify those additional medical capabilities and match them up against emerging infectious ailments.

“My program predicts in a virtual world … what the chances are for all those tens of thousands of substances to be antibiotic,” he says.

“So before testing anything, I can prioritize and rank all those compounds and once they are ranked you have a list of higher priority entities to test against a new pathogen.”
. . .

The program technology he’s employing is known by the general name “in silico.” It is increasingly being used by drug companies to test compounds against diseases in a virtual computer world.

Finding new disease for known cures

More information:
In silico molecular biology experiments
The emerging in-silico scientist (pdf)