Big Data turns old drugs into new ones

Big Data, biology and genomics have led to understanding how to create a new drug from an old one. An algorithm has been used to analyse the molecular properties of an existing drug used for treat some tumors and found that it also works against metabolic syndrome. The research study, published by Nature Communications, was led by the University of Trento. It shows how the approach can help 'drug repositioning', which is a new frontier of pharmacological research that uses new indications from existing drugs and the application of the newly identified drugs to the treatment of diseases other than the drug's intended disease."This is an approach that has already been tried in the past and become a reality thanks to new technologies, which make a vast, systematic and fast analysis possible and which will become ever more powerful thanks to the massive amount of data on the human genome," ANSA was told by Enrico Domenici, President and Chief Executive Officer at The Microsoft Research - University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (COSBI).