Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) and SRI International have won a second grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health, for the joint development of an information repository and software to identify novel therapeutics for tuberculosis (TB).
The Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) grant which will support the next two years of research will focus on extending a systems biology-cheminformatics approach to develop molecular mimics and computationally evaluate them for drug efficacy.
SRI International Information and Computer Science Division program director Carolyn Talcott said, "After successful completion of Phase I, where we integrated intensive data mining, curation and computational approaches to suggest biological targets and their small molecule modulators, we now look forward to follow-up studies that will refine and validate our approach."
CDD and SRI will evaluate the molecules discovered in Phase I and develop a software product which will provide query and analysis capabilities, and include links to other drug discovery tools and databases.
CDD science vice president Sean Ekins said the project has already resulted in multiple publically accessible datasets that include results of experimental assays and information about drug compounds.
"We will build upon the demonstrated proof-of-concept to identify more compounds active against tuberculosis to include in the repository."
