Bioinformatics in Drug Development
Bioinformatics is a research area where biology, computer science and information technologies merge into a single discipline. The ultimate goal of the area is to enable the discovery of new biological insights as well as to create a global perspective from which unifying principles in biology can be discerned.
Outline
- Introduction to Bioinformatics
- Molecular biology
- Diseases
- Drug development
- Bioinformatics and applications
Bioinformatics
- Molecular Biology
- Computer Science
- Information Technology
They come together to form a science field: Bioinformatics
- Living organisms are constructed from cells
- Cell contains genes
- Genes hold the information to build and maintain cell structures
- Genes produce proteins
- An organism function is performed by a protein or a set of proteins
- Cell is the basic structural and functional unit
Diseases
- Gene replication may have errors called mutations
- Cell contains many DNA repair mechanisms
- Genes with mutations produce abnormal proteins
- Abnormal proteins may function improperly, and
- Diseases then occur
Understand disease
- How the genes are altered in abnormal tissues
- How their products, proteins, are affected
- How these proteins interact with other proteins
- How the disease affects the entire patient
- Alzheimer's Disease
Disease target identification
- Genes or proteins involved in the disease
- Experimental target validation,
- Collecting abnormal tissues
- Screening the tissues
- Validating targets using gene expression, pathway and protein-protein interaction data
- Traditional approaches
Drug discovery
- Search for the compound acting on targets
- Search in the nature
- Develop new compound
- Try existing compounds
- Using compound
- Screening the treated tissues
- Validating targets
Bioinformatics methods .
- The lead compound can become a new medicine
Drug test - ADME/TOX
- Absorbed into the bloodstream
- Distributed to the proper site of action in the body
- Metabolized efficiently and effectively
- Excreted from the body
- To be not toxic
ADME/Tox studies are performed in living cells, in animals and via computational models.
Applications of Bioinformatics
- Algorithms to group genes into groups
- Regulated similarly
- Having similar functions
- Having similar structures
- Algorithms to classify genes into classes
- Having the same functions
- Having the same structures
- Computer-based simulation methods
- Computer-based visualizations
- Computer-aided designs