New method saves time in inventing drugs
<Posted 10/13/2003 17:36 240>
Engineers at the University have developed an accelerated method for
inventing protein-based drugs and, in a unique collaboration with two
other institutions, have used it to design improved versions of a
possible treatment for inflammatory disorders.
The new approach allows scientists to bypass time-consuming,
trial-and-error procedures for making and testing billions of protein
fragments as possible drug candidates. Instead, the researchers
invented mathematical techniques and used a cluster of computers to
calculate the near-optimum compositions for the proteins.
The achievement grew out of a long-time collaboration between
Christodoulos Floudas, a Princeton professor of chemical engineering,
John Lambris, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the
University of Pennsylvania, and Dimitrios Morikis, a researcher in
chemical and environmental engineering at the University of
California-Riverside.
The full story is available in the Weekly Bulletin.
