New targets for old drugs : Nature News

Description

New targets for old drugs

A computer program predicts thousands of previously unknown drug-target associations.

Researchers have identified thousands of new targets for existing drugs using a computer program that compares the molecular structures of drug compounds and chemicals that occur naturally in the body. The technique can be used to uncover new applications or reveal potential side effects for drugs already on the market.

"It's a new approach, and it's a totally different from what everyone else has done," says study author Bryan Roth, a pharmacologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "That's why it actually works."

The most common methods for predicting whether a small molecule binds to various drug targets involves either high-throughput laboratory screening or virtually simulating whether a particular compound fits together with proteins like a key in a lock. The experimental approach, however, is tedious and time consuming, whereas the computational method relies on the existence of high-resolution protein structures, which are hard to come by for many drug-sensitive proteins.

Tantalizing targets

Last year, Peer Bork and his colleagues at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, developed a new approach for finding novel drug targets for existing medications. They showed that drugs with similar adverse side effects often ...

Original URL

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091101/full/news.2009.1047.html?s=news_rss

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091101/full/news.2009.1047.html?s=news_rss