Promising Applications of Computational Biology

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:10:30 -0700

Description

The tools of computational biology may be applied at an increasing rate to pharmaceutical innovation in the next 20 to 50 years, resulting in a faster, less costly, and more tailored approach to drug development.

Computer science and molecular biology have made some of the most significant contributions to science over the past 20 years, and computational biology (also known as bioinformatics) seeks to organize the multitude of activities that are emerging from new collaborations between the two fields. Computational biology makes use of advances in computing power, modelling, visualisation, genomics, protein chemistry, and information science, among others, to find relationships among biomarkers, genetics, pharmaceutical responses, normal responses, and diseases. For example, a computational biologist might search the human genome for particular patterns, analyse gene expression data for biologically relevant molecules, or develop models for visualising the interaction of DNA with other molecules. A loosely shared goal of computational biology is to bring the predictive power of mathematics and computer modelling to modern molecular biology and reign in the enormous amount of information produced by genomic sequencing.

Computational biology is showing preliminary signs of successful of applications. The applied subfields generating some of the greatest interest because of their potential impact on biomedicine are biosimulation and pharmacogenomics, and further research progress will come in these areas in the next 3 to 10 years.

Biosimulation is the computer modelling of biological processes and has the character of what some have called a 'laptop lab'. One hope is to use knowledge of the human genome and pharmaceutical chemistry to design new or more effective drugs that could then be 'tested' in computer models before attempting costly clinical trials, although this potential development is still years away.
Pharmacogenomics is the science of inherited variations in drug responses and promises better biomedicine through a personalized approach. The idea is that a patient's genome could be profiled to predict in advance the effectiveness of a particular drug or treatment. One of the few instances in which this approach has been demonstrated is with the cytochrome P450 (CYP) family of liver enzymes, which are involved in the metabolism of more than 30 different classes of drugs. Genetics tests have been developed to screen for variations and avoid drug overdoses. Another enzyme, thiopurine methyltransferase, has been shown to negatively influence chemotherapy treatments for childhood leukaemia in the rare patient who has a defective variant.

A new industry has developed around applications of computational biology in the last decade. Initial hopes have been tempered, however, and ethical concerns about privacy and property rights to genetic information have arisen. Nonetheless, many new computer applications to aid the drug development process are expected in the next decade. The larger goal of creating a fully predictive biomedicine with tailored treatments is still 20 to 50 years out."

This will be enabled by:

"Training of a new generation of scientists in computer science and biology
Continued investment by governments seeking to remain competitive in scientific research, especially biomedicine
New collaborations between the pharmaceutical industry and the biotechnology industry"

Early indicators include:

"Passage by Iceland in 1998 of the Health Sector Database Act, giving the DeCode exclusive rights to databases of genetic and medical information for the country's 270,00 citizens
Consideration by other countries, including the UK, of 'biobanks' or population databases
Issuance in 1999 by the Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BITSI) of the US National Institutes of Health of a report stating that the NIH should create between 5 and 20 National Programs of Excellence in Biomedical Computing and should develop a national computer infrastructure
Opening of research facilities related to the State of California's new initiative, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, beginning in 2005
Choice by the Public Library of Science, a new open-access publisher of scientific and medical research, of Computational Biology to be its third journal and publication of the first issue in June 2005"

What to watch:

"New publicly and privately funded centres for biomedical computing open.
Life science research in universities reorganizes under the banner computational biology and bioinformatics.
Debates are waged over the merits of computer models verus clinical trials in providing evidence of toxicity or pharmacological efficacy.
A computer of model of a cell, perhaps a liver cell, is developed.

biosimulation

Promising Applications of Computational Biology

Description

Signals