Computer and Drugs with Raphael Onuku: Recent Episodes
Raphael Onuku
There are many in silico tools to carry out, for instance, ADMET predictions, binding pocket analysis, predict protein-protein interaction binding site, analyse PPI network, drug repositioning, predict the 3D structure of a macromolecule, graft a sugar onto a protein structure, peptide docking, systems pharmacology, adverse drug reaction predictions, compound collection annotation, virtual screening, analysis of point mutations observed in patients (instead of mutation, variation is nowadays most often used), protein docking.
Would you chance your life to a lowly piece of hardware called the computer? Would you let it fabricate and determine drugs for life threatening diseases like hepatitis, cancers and even AIDS? Well, actually your answer (or your opinion) doesn’t seem to matter. Because the world has moved over to the other side. Computers are being used to design drugs and it is being done on a humongous level, by almost every multinational pharma company, the names of which you will undoubtedly find at the back of your prescription medicines at home. So what’s with all this computer stuff? Have we parted with our perspicacity, our intuition, our ready willingness to tackle any challenge head on? We have always found solutions to mankind’s biggest problems all by ourselves. As Matthew McConaughey’s character in Interstellar says “..or perhaps we’ve forgotten we are still pioneers?”