Research scientitsts at the Institute design molecules and molecular systems aimed at biomedical targets. This initiative contributes to the development and refinement of next-generation drugs and materials used in a variety of applications including Rational Drug Design and Nanobiology.

The last decade has witnessed a technological revolution in pharmaceutical drug discovery. Combinatorial chemistry (CombiChem) and high-throughput synthesis & screening (HTS&S) have been embraced by the biopharmaceutical industry as a means to accelerate the discovery of new drug candidates. Giving further impetus to the growth of CombiChem and HTS&S is the simultaneous emergence of Genomics, the World Wide Web, the rapid development and deployment of inexpensive robots, and advances in assay-miniaturization. Despite these impressive technological advances, drug discovery has become more expensive and time consuming over the same period of time. Scientists must now deal with an overabundance of data on potential drug candidates and drug targets, clearly an example of “knowing so little about so much”. Moreover, some sources estimate that it takes 10-15 years and costs $800 million on average to bring a new medicine to market. In light of these sobering realities, the central aim of Rational Drug Design is to help scientists discovery drugs “faster, cheaper, and safer”.
Rational Drug Design refers to the use of specialized molecular modeling software running on fast computers equipped with molecular visualization capabilities to accelerate the drug discovery process. RDD involves the design and optimization of small, organic therapeutics from the ideal case, where a protein structure is available, to the other extreme where only a small collection of 'hits' from high throughput screening can be utilized. The breadth of innovative techniques for structure-based, analog, and combinatorial library design allows you to efficiently use information from all possible sources on your therapeutic target.

Rational Drug Design employs the tools of Bioinformatics to identify genes and proteins as potential drug targets. Sequence databases are doubling in size every 15 months, and we now have the complete genome sequences of more than 100 organisms. This ability that generates vast quantities of data surpasses current means to use this data meaningfully for rational drug design. We use Bioinformatics to bridge the enormous gap between rapidly-growing new gene sequence data, predicted proteins, and the related structural information that is required to design, synthesize, or efficiently screen for new drugs.
The manner in which new drugs are being developed has changed radically due to our increased understanding of molecular biology. Fortunately, there is only a limited set of data one needs to gather about potential drug targets, and different bioinformatics tools can be used to gather this information, interpret it, and make associations leading to new discoveries. The relevant data includes

As powerful as rational drug design has proven, molecular design opens still more frontiers in biomedical research.

Nanobiology, a sub-specialty of nanotechnology, offers the possibility of advancement in biology and medicine. Nanobiology applications include technologies and applications in biomolecular components development and biocompatible surfaces integrated into microscale systems, implantable biochip devices, synthetically engineered quasi-viral components, modified DNA, structured proteomics, pseudoproteins, biomolecular "devices". The future beholds artificially engineered organelles and cells, technologies which combine organic and inorganic materials and substrates into integrated nanoscale systems, biomolecular prosthetics, and intra-cellular modification strategies which will redefine the very essence of what is commonly referred to as life.

Self assembling / self organizing molecular systems, emanating from the development of applied nanobiology, foster the creation of molecular computing platforms. The biotech industry is extremely IT and computational resource intensive, which in turn benefits directly from the advent of evermore powerful and diverse forms of computing enabled by developments in nanocomputing systems. Biological metaphors in computing, such as genetic and evolutionary computation, currently implemented on reconfigurable computing platforms, further accelerates the pace of biotech development via bioinformatics and in-silico biological processes.

For additional information on drug discovery and nanobiology, contact Dr. William Welsh and visit the Welsh Lab website