DNASTAR, INC. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Most drugs interact with protein molecules to elicit

Description

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Most drugs interact with protein molecules to elicit a cellular response. Traditional drug discovery is a laborious and expensive experimental process, so computational approaches to assess protein function and to accelerate the discovery process are in high demand. Virtual drug screening and structure-based drug design represent computational approaches that can be important to the modern drug discovery and development process. Both are reliant on high-resolution tertiary (3D) protein structures and are hampered by the slow and often unsuccessful methods of experimental structure determination. Protein structure prediction is poised to impact human health by accelerating the construction of high-confidence structural models of drug targets and biopharmaceuticals, which will help identify new therapeutic strategies. However, current methods are very limited in their ability to predict high-resolution models, which is preventing broad classes of therapeutics from being