A new generation of technologies for drug development

Technology application that will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the world market for new drugs and computer applications for the biotechnology sector. Computer technology drastically reduces time and costs to develop new drugs and is the first of a new generation of software products for the biotechnology industry. Such results were possible thanks to recent advances in physics and mathematics to molecular modeling.

Large pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, spending up to 15% of their revenues on developing new medicines Research & Development (R & D), which provide them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Companies conduct their own research, and acquire the development of small firms, often with the firms.

Typically, the process of developing new drugs begins with the identification of proteins responsible for the appearance or progression of the disease in the body (target protein). The task of the next stage is to identify or obtain the substance (inhibitor) that blocks the biological function of protein and pathogen responsible still a number of requirements such as compliance with standards acceptable toxicity, the possibility of obtaining a commercial scale, etc. Here, researchers are faced with the need to operate with huge amounts of information about possible molecular structures of the potential inhibitor and its properties. One key issue is the identification of an inhibitor, which has the lowest energy binding protein. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies solve this problem by searching libraries of chemical compounds (high throughput screening) by means of special machines for chemical and biological screening, processing hundreds of thousands of substances. The alternative is calculated on the super-computer clusters. Even the most advanced techniques used by market leaders in these calculations are based on empirical models that lead to unavoidable errors. The size of the error of such calculations is comparable with the calculated value, which leads to significantly expand the range of search inhibitors. All that takes the bulk of the financial and time resources that stage. This stage of drug development is delayed by an average of three years, expensive for pharmaceutical companies and is an independent business for many companies (Lead Identification and Lead Optimization). But more importantly, the need for new drugs have to wait "until it appears in drugstores (those who can still" waiting ").The Russian company Quantum Pharmaceuticals, uniting the world's leading scientists in the field of theoretical physics and computer science, has achieved unparalleled in the world of the speed, precision and productivity in defining the parameters of interaction of inhibitors and protein targets at the molecular level through the use of radically new approaches to the calculation. The basis of computer technology Quantum Pharmaceuticals became the latest methods of molecular, quantum and statistical physics. The technology has successfully passed the so-called verification principles, allowing scientists to develop a fundamentally new drug candidates against AIDS (HIV-1), Alzheimer's disease, tuberculosis, COPD, Hepatitis C and many others.Besides search problem substances that may eventually become drugs, the technology solves a number of other all-important tasks in drug development. One of them is to evaluate the possible toxicity of new drugs at an early stage, when the developers have not yet spent for a particular substance years of work and investment. Failure pharmaceutical industry to effectively address these issues is illustrated in the figure of $ 8 billion, the industry lost in 2003 due to problems with toxicity of drugs and a fall of 25% of the course in one day Merck shares in connection with the withdrawal from the market of their blockbuster drugs Vioxx. With the use of technology Quantum, simply put, a researcher can learn how the new drug will interact with each of the proteins of the organism, whose three-dimensional structure is known to mankind and to choose only those substances that do not form in the body of "dangerous contacts".
The largest players in the market of computer programs to develop drugs, such as Tripos, Accelrys and other spending huge budgets on marketing their products. Quantum Pharmaceuticals is not very concerned about this fact: the potential customer need only once to try out the free demo version of Quantum, available on the site, then he has never come the idea to use other programs, simply because ... Quantum what really works and the results of his calculations in terms of accuracy are not even close competitors. The main problem of the market of computer applications for drug development is that during the time of its establishment, the reputation of computer methods was undercut by the fact that it seems the market solutions for scientific problems of technological backwardness and the level of development of computer technology could not effectively solve applied problems, in best case, acting as a coarse filter prior to use chemical and biological experiments. Therefore, all the words at the expense of a technology are perceived in the industry and science with enormous skepticism, however, researchers must take a demo and check around for yourself. To test the computational power applications Quantum enough to go on the corporate website www.q-pharm.com and download the demo software module that allows you to perform calculations of the binding constant (inhibition) of the complex protein-ligand (therapeutic target - the candidate drug).Development and application of the advanced world of technology is a planned step in the development of ambitious plans to Quantum Pharmaceuticals. Specialists Quantum Pharmaceuticals is actively engaged in the development of algorithms for solving complex problems drug discovery using quantum computers. According to the forecasts, the first full-fledged quantum computer, a revolutionary higher performance than currently existing computing power on the planet, will be built within the next 2-3 years. Currently, there are already devices that perform some operations of a quantum computer to solve simple problems. The strategic setting for use in the near future quantum computers to develop new drugs and gave the name of the company «Quantum Pharmaceuticals». "Few outstrip its time, it is this philosophy combines the company's founders.Taking into account the universal character of the Quantum technology for finding inhibitors for each protein with an open three-dimensional structure with the best in the world of precision and speed the introduction of technology in Russia will be a turning point in the development of Russian science and the pharmaceutical industry. Besides pharmaceuticals, the algorithms used in the Quantum Fund, can be used to develop new substances for agricultural purposes (crop protection), cosmetology (development of new cosmetic products), chemical industry, oil and gas sphere (eg catalysis), environmental protection and many other industries that are unresolved to date problems in the field of molecular modeling. At the moment in Russian scientific institutions is not just this stage of drug development, researchers have knowledge about promising target protein, have the opportunity to test a limited number of candidates for the drugs in vitro and in-vivo, the possibility of ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism , Excretion and Toxicology) studies.Quantum Pharmaceuticals Company announced its readiness to participate in collaboration with scientists in grants and state programs through the use of their computational technologies to enable scientists and promising candidates for drugs for further research. Quantum also invites scholars to apply the calculations in their development and co-publish and otherwise use the research results.