Computers in Drug Research and Development

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Computers in Drug Research and Development

As the computer becomes more and more powerful, its uses and abilities grow. Scientists have been able to harness this power in to assist them in their goals of researching and developing drugs for human use. Computers can be found in nearly every drug research laboratory and development center in the world.

In the process of developing a drug, thousands upon thousands of chemical compounds are tested to be used in laboratory tests and animal tests. Generally, over 5000 compounds are chosen for such testing. Of 5000 chosen compounds, around five will be acceptable for use on humans in testing. Computers play a huge role in the testing and narrowing down of such chemical compounds used in drugs. Models of chemicals and reactions can be computer simulated to rule out compounds that would not be acceptable. Using computers in such a way greatly reduces the time spent on lengthy animal testing, and also ensures that the drugs that do pass will be safe for human testing.

Home computers are now being used to aid scientists in drug research as well. One web site, www.FightAidsAtHome.org offers a downloadable program that uses your home computers idle processes to perform complex computations that aid in AIDS drug research. The results are automatically sent back to the researchers who use them in their developmental process. Such a program would have been insignificant ten years ago, when very few people owned computers powerful enough to perform the operations needed by researchers today. However, because the internet is so widespread and because home computers are becoming so powerful, such a program works and works well.

One specific use of computers in drug development is a program developed by Art Olson called AutoDock. This program is used to simulate the interactions of proteins in molecules as they meet. Because of the extreme power of today’s computers, the program creates extremely accurate results, even though there are thousands of factors that determine the final result. Using these simulations, scientists are able to more easily understand how two different molecules will interact, which helps greatly in the drug development process.

Many programs similar to AutoDock are used by scientists. Each of these programs are used to determine the outcomes of specific interactions between molecules, chemical compounds and other biological and chemical interactions.

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