New approach accelerates drug discovery
Posted by
Rafal Kaminski, Patient Value Unit - New Medicines
05-Sep-2018
Researchers from Imperial College London, Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School, and UCB worked together to devise and validate a new computational method for drug discovery. This advanced framework known as CRAFT (Causal Reasoning Analytical Framework for Target discovery), has the potential to predict novel targets for future drugs.
As proof-of-concept, the investigators applied their approach to epilepsy resulting in the discovery of a new drug target for epilepsy that was experimentally confirmed in pre-clinical models.
The discovery and validation of this potential new anti-epileptic drug took less than two years – much faster than traditional approaches to medical research.
It has the potential to transform medicine and improve lives by dramatically speeding up the identification of new drug targets across the spectrum of human disease.
The team of scientists published their findings in Nature Communications, an international peer-reviewed publication.
This research, funded by UCB, is an example of a successful international collaboration between academia and industry. It illustrates our commitment to partnership and to bringing together leading scientists to work together a common goal – improving the lives of patients.
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