Accelerating Drug Discovery
This
major multi-centre project is a collaboration amongst several groups
based in higher education institutions within Scotland. The initiative
harnesses chemistry and biology resources throughout Scotland and beyond
in order to accelerate preclinical drug discovery, by using the latest
translational cheminformatics methods. At its core is intelligent in
silico matching of chemical structures with proteins that are potential
disease targets. The project brings together rich, but previously
isolated, resources in drug research in academic institutions in
Scotland and beyond. It aims to provide an accessible central resource
that allows chemists and biologists to boost their current drug
discovery research efforts. The project achieves this by encouraging
chemists to upload structures and biologists to upload targets and both
parties to initiate advanced in silico screening and hit identification
at the touch of a button.
Role of Scottish Bioinformatics Forum
The SBF provided introductions between the project team and key players in informatics in Scotland and brought in potential new partners. In addition, the SBF identified and funded a research assistant from the National e-Science Centre to create the portal database that was critical to getting the project started and to provide the database support
The SBF also provided funding of £3,000 to employ and train three undergraduate students in bioinformatics methods relating to molecular modelling. The students’ role was to populate the database with chemical structures collected from the lab books and PhD theses of academics and students. They also ensured that physical samples of these structures exist, so that immediate assay validation can be performed for matches identified in silico. Incorporating these libraries into the database created a unique resource for drug discovery and gave the project critical mass to begin offering its services to the wider community.
Outcome
Support from the Scottish Bioinformatics Forum ensured that this resource was put in place quickly, which meant that the project staff were able to give practical demonstrations of their translational cheminformatics expertise when visiting potential collaborators in other countries. The creation of the database has ensured that the project collaborators’ expertise in medicinal chemistry is being used to initiate collaborations between biologists and chemists and thereby generate a pipeline of commercially-focussed drug discovery opportunities. The establishment of the chemical structures database has also brought the benefits of bioinformatics to researchers with no previous experience of bioinformatics, and encouraged their involvement.
