Computer used to predict drug side effects

[Euphoric]

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science..._effects/7839/

Computer used to predict drug side effects

Published: Dec. 12, 2007 at 1:52 PM

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have created a computational technique that bypasses conventional animal and human drug testing to predict side effects.

Since unexpected side effects account for one third of all drug failures during development, early identification of such adverse effects before drugs are tested in humans is crucial. University of California-San Diego researchers have developed a novel technique using computer modeling to identify potential side effects.

Conventional test methods screen compounds in animal studies in advance of human trials. The UCSD team -- led by Professor Philip Bourne and Lei Xie of the San Diego Supercomputer Center -- uses computational modeling to screen specific drug molecules and compare them with the Protein Data Bank, a worldwide repository that contains tens of thousands of three-dimensional protein structures.

The researchers emphasized their technique still needs to be tested experimentally.

The research is detailed online in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.

[psychonautilus]

I was just waiting for the day for this to come out. I figured it was too complex as of yet, but apparently they've made some headway.

[Paracelsus]

I've seen many articles on the development of this and similar techniques in journals of alternatives to animal testing, i.e. this is heavily supported by animal rights activists.

This will undoubtedly save many rats and possibly some human subjects, but it is not an alternative by any means. This computerized system will most likely be used to aid in drug design, eliminating compounds evaluated by the computer to have undesirable/dangerous effects before they are tested on animals. But human knowledge of the human body is still very limited, so this doesn't "bypass animal and human drug testing" at all.

[Euphoric]

Yeah and although human (and animal) life loss may happen as a result of drug testing and we are still susceptible to human error, what if the (man-made) computer mistakenly rules out a very beneficial drug?

[Paracelsus]

what if the (man-made) computer mistakenly rules out a very beneficial drug?

We'll never know (in ~99.9% of cases). This probably happens all the time. If a drug doesn't look promising in rats, it generally disappears in an archive. For example, this would've happened to LSD if Hofmann wouldn't have felt like synthesizing it again.