New method saves time in inventing drugs
Posted October 13, 2003; 05:39 p.m.
Engineers at the University have developed an accelerated method for inventing protein-based drugs and, in a unique collaboration with two other institutions, have used it to design improved versions of a possible treatment for inflammatory disorders.
The new approach allows scientists to bypass time-consuming, trial-and-error procedures for making and testing billions of protein fragments as possible drug candidates. Instead, the researchers invented mathematical techniques and used a cluster of computers to calculate the near-optimum compositions for the proteins.
The achievement grew out of a long-time collaboration between Christodoulos Floudas, a Princeton professor of chemical engineering, John Lambris, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dimitrios Morikis, a researcher in chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California-Riverside.
The full story is available in the Weekly Bulletin.
Contact: Eric Quinones (609) 258-3601