Computational Drug Discovery,Dev - 605.656

Recent advances in bioinformatics and drug discovery platforms have brought us significantly closer to the realization of rational drug design and development. Across the pharmaceutical industry, considerable effort is being invested in developing experimental and translational medicine, and it is starting to make a significant impact on the drug discovery process itself. This course examines the major steps of the evolving modern drug discovery platforms, the computational techniques and tools used during each step of rational drug discovery, and how these techniques facilitate the integration of experimental and translation medicine with the discovery/development platforms. The course will build on concepts from a number of areas including bioinformatics, computational genomic/ proteomics, in-silico system biology, computational medicinal chemistry, and pharmaceutical biotechnology. Topics covered in the course include comparative pharmacogenomics, protein/ antibody modeling, interaction and regulatory networks, QSAR/ pharmacophores, ADME/toxicology and clinical biomarkers. Relevant mathematical concepts are developed as needed in the course. Prerequisite(s): EN.605.205 Molecular Biology for Computer Scientists or equivalent.