Perfect cocktail lessens inflammation
14 Dec 2011 by Evoluted New Media
Inflammation has evolved to help fight infection, but can be damaging in long term diseases: most non-infectious diseases are in fact worsened by inflammation. Researchers from the University of Manchester have found a way of identifying ideal drug combinations which could prevent inflammation occurring and help patients recover from critical health problems such as stroke, heart attacks and cancer.
Using these ideal drug combinations, researchers believe they can block inflammation and reduce the damage caused by non-communicable disease like stroke.
“Most diseases have complex causes. This makes their analysis a problem of systems biology, and to find novel therapies multiple targets need to be attacked at once,” said Professor Douglas Kell.
“We have devised a strategy, based on Darwinian evolution, to make this considerably easier. Although our immediate interest is inflammation and conditions such as stroke, our approach is universal and is thus applicable to all complex diseases.”
Kell led a multidisciplinary team of researchers who developed an evolutionary computer programme which rapidly sifted through nine billion combinations of potential drugs.
Using robotics in the lab to sort and test 50 drug combinations at a time, the scientists were able to find effective combinations which could be refined as many times as necessary to find ideal combinations.
“Our experiments were guided by software that is based on an evolutionary algorithm. The algorithm suggests new drug combinations from previous ones by remixing their components – much like the DNA of a child is a mix of that of their parents,” said Professor Pedro Mendes.
“The new drug combinations are then tested and the best are selected to continue generating new ones. In each experiments we tested 50 drug combinations, then the software would tell us which new ones to test in the new experiment.”
Ultimately, the scientists hope the finding – published in Nature Chemistry Biology – will lead to the development of tailored therapies for treating inflammation.
