Cloud computing-Role in Drug discovery

Cloud computing can be the drug discovery game changer as foreseen by Paul Davey -the chief executive officer at InhibOx Ltd.Nimbus Thinks It Can Cure Obesity With Cloud Computing; Next Up, an Exercise Pill....
iScreen: world's first cloud-computing web server for virtual screening and de novo drug design based on TCM database@Taiwan.The Virtual Laboratory Project is working to enable "Molecular Modelling for Drug Design" on the World Wide Grid...
iScreen is the world's first web server that employs world's largest TCM database for virtual screening and de novo drug design. It is believed that this web server can lead TCM research to a new era of drug development. The TCM docking and screening server is available at http://iScreen.cmu.edu.tw/ .

Let’s start with a refresher, and make the link between high-throughput screening, computer-aided
drug discovery and cloud computing along the way. The scientists behind developing CADD systems have always been grasping for more computing power, to make practical their developments. Ten years ago, Professor Graham Richards at Oxford University was leading the screen-saver project (9), pulling spare CPU power from over three million PCs across the world to drive virtual screening of cancer drug candidates. Cloud computing makes that amazing vision a practical, commercial reality. At last, computing power is available and cost-effective enough to cause the design of
modelling systems to be fundamentally reassessed. It should herald the development of no-compromise
CADD and effective virtual screening – and that could indeed change the drug discovery game.

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Cloud-Driven Biopharmaceutical Company

Ariel Schwartz at FastCompany recently profiled Nimbus, a biopharmaceutical company that is making big waves in the drug discovery space. The firm has made announcements about pending developments in obesity and lymphoma-fighting drugs. While there are already numerous efforts underway to tackle these conditions at any number of other pharmaceutical companies, Nimbus has a particularly “nimble” drug discovery model that hinges on cloud computing.Nimbus has garnered some significant attention as of late beyond its upcoming obesity pill that aims to mimic the effects of exercise by preventing new fat and burning that which is stored. The company just received an undisclosed amount of financial backing from Bill Gates. Another contributor to the seed round was Dr. Richard Friesner, who founded the computational drug design company Schrodinger. 

According to the Schwartz, “The company’s secret sauce is its computer-inspired drug discovery approach, which uses cloud computing to simulate what a drug target looks like. This allows the company to do research overnight that would take months at other pharmaceutical companies.

During the brief interview Nimbus suggested that another ingredient of their secret sauce is that computational scalability and flexibility using the cloud model allows for more agility to consider a more extensive set of options during modeling and drug discovery.  In this case, the Nimbus process is unique in that it is able to consider the important role water plays during absorption of a drug since it can determine how well the drug is retained. 

According to Nimbus, this is something many companies cannot (or do not consider) because of the massive computational requirements it takes to factor this into the equation.

As the company’s Chief Business Officer, Jonathan Montagu noted, “It’s the difference between Google Maps and Google Earth…most drug companies have a two-dimensional view, but we have an understanding of how water molecules in a protein target impact drug binding. This gives you more of a three-dimensional representation of how a drug target works.”

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Cloud computing

Step-by-Step: From Virtualization to Cloud.

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Step-by-Step: From Virtualization to Cloud

In an ideal IT world we might start all over again - move entirely to public cloud providers, build applications in real time, run everything as services, and pay only for what we need. Indeed, this is exactly what some businesses are doing. However, many businesses have a ‘legacy' of existing IT investments that generate revenue, manage cost and risk, free up people, and generally deliver a lot of value. They have plenty of challenges, but their significant and positive investment in IT does make their business better. In his session at last week's Up 2010 Cloud Computing Conference, Andi Mann, provided actionable advice for these businesses, covering ROI opportunities, realistic challenges and expectations, and real‐world examples in a step‐by‐step evolution from virtualization to cloud, which leverages their valuable investments in existing IT systems.

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