Which Meds Are Best For You? Check systemsDock

Scientists have created a free online resource that makes screening for the right drug faster and more accurate.

AsianScientist (Jul. 29, 2016) – Scientists in Japan have created a free online resource that makes screening for drugs faster and more accurate.

Inside the human body, drugs can end up interacting with unintended molecular targets, leading to unwanted side effects. Creating a drug that can hit the right molecular target is critical, and this selective interaction has been typically achieved through extensive lab experimentation and a long series of clinical trials, which are both time consuming and expensive.

“The process of creating a new drug can easily last for ten years, even when everything goes smoothly,” said Dr. Kun-Yi Hsin, who was the first author of the study.

systemsDock, which allows users to virtually check the effectiveness and specificity of a potential drug, is the result of a collaborative effort by researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, the System Biology Institute, the University of Tokyo and the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medicine. Their work was published in Nucleic Acids Research.

Using the online resource, users can identify the biological targets for a potential drug, allowing many potential drugs and a number of biological targets to be screened at the same time. In addition, the research tool lets users explore how the potential drug hits the biological target in the context of the biological system in which the interaction happens.

“Systems biology is a relatively new field; the main idea behind it is the integration of different biological systems in a single description. When everything is put together, it is like a map,” Hsin said.

Based on these maps, researchers can then conduct a more comprehensive screen to gain a deeper understanding of drug interactions in biological systems. Maps focused on diseases such as influenza have already been created and can be used in systemsDock.


The article can be found at: Hsin et al. (2016) systemsDock: A Web Server for Network Pharmacology-based Prediction and Analysis.

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Source: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

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