The drug discovery portal: secure matchmaking and collaboration for biologists and chemists

Bayliss, C., Breslin, C., Clark, R., Johnson, B., Mackay, S. and Sinnott, R.O. (2008) The drug discovery portal: secure matchmaking and collaboration for biologists and chemists. In: UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, Edinburgh, UK, 8-11 Sept 2008,

Abstract

The development of drugs is an expensive and time consuming activity. Current drug development programmes can require literally require decades to bring a drug to the market and cost in excess of £1bn. In silico drug discovery and the processes associated with it are thus highly desirable to both speed up the development and reduce the overall cost. One way in which in silico drug discovery is realised is through virtual screening. To be potentially useful as a drug a chemist’s compound must be able to interact with locations identified on the biologists protein implicated in the disease state. Candidate compounds can consist of both potential and known drugs. In this paper we present the Drug Discovery Portal (DDP) which provides such a secure collaborative environment. Key aspects of the portal that we consider are the matchmaking service between chemists and biologists. Given that new drugs or biological targets can have considerable commercial value, as does the software used for matching, we focus in particular upon how secure screening and matchmaking can be achieved without necessarily giving away commercially valuable information.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: No
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sinnott, Professor Richard and Bayliss, Mr Christopher
• Authors: Bayliss, C., Breslin, C., Clark, R., Johnson, B., Mackay, S., and Sinnott, R.O.
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• College/School: University Services > IT Services > Computing Service