A grant from the National Institutes of Health will help Wayne State University researchers explore new avenues for manufacturing drugs using computer models.
Dr. Alice Walker, an assistant professor of chemistry at Wayne State College of Arts and Sciences, is leading a $1.8 million study by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, “Computational Rational Design of Carbohydrates and Nucleic Acids.” Drug scaffolds with multiscale dynamics and AI. ”
Most drug design is done using small organic molecules. The computational models needed to do this are excellent, but scaffolding exotic drugs such as sugars and fluorescent molecules is problematic. Our laboratory will use this grant to develop new computational techniques and apply them to the development of new carbohydrate drugs and fluorescent imaging agents. ”
Dr. Alice Walker, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Wayne State College of Arts and Sciences
Walker said computational studies of carbohydrates, nucleic acids and fluorescent molecules are difficult to simulate without taking into account complex physics. This study combines simulation, high-quality automatic database generation, and machine learning model development to investigate the binding and behavior of carbohydrate-based heparanase inhibitors, which can be targeted by anticancer drugs, and the photophysical behavior of fluorescent materials. The purpose is to understand the relationship between structure and structure. Nucleic acid.
“Biological scaffolds may have fewer side effects and higher efficacy, potentially offering new possibilities for difficult-to-treat diseases,” Walker said. “This grant is specifically aimed at new researchers, as it can be difficult for new principal investigators to win grants, especially when competing with researchers with decades of experience. This grant also gives us the freedom to do research and research in whatever direction we take.”
“The R35 award from the National Institutes of Health is awarded to the most promising researchers who have the potential to make important advances in research,” said Dr. Ezemenali M. Obasi, vice president for research and innovation at Wayne State University. said. “The research proposed by Dr. Walker could offer new therapeutic possibilities for difficult-to-treat diseases using new techniques that could yield breakthrough results. We look forward to the results of this important study.”
The award number for this grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health is GM154949.
