October 20, 2014

LLNL researchers Monte LaBute (left) and Felice Lightstone (right) were part of a Lab team that recently published an article in PLOS ONE detailing the use of supercomputers to link proteins to drug side effects.
Photo by Julie Russell/LLNL
LIVERMORE, California - New medications created by pharmaceutical companies have helped millions of Americans alleviate pain and suffering from their medical conditions. However, the drug creation process often misses many side effects that kill at least 100,000 patients a year, according to the journal Nature.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have discovered a high-tech method of using supercomputers to identify proteins that cause medications to have certain adverse drug reactions (ADR) or side effects. They are using high-performance computers (HPC) to process proteins and drug compounds in an algorithm that produces reliable data outside of a laboratory setting for drug discovery.
The team recently published its findings in the journal PLOS ONE, titled "Adverse Drug Reaction Prediction Using Scores Produced by Large-Scale Drug-Protein Target Docking on High-Performance Computer Machines."
"We need to do something to identify these side effects earlier in the drug development cycle to save lives and reduce costs," said Monte LaBute, a researcher from LLNL's Computational Engineering Division and the paper's lead author.
It takes pharmaceutical companies roughly 15 years to bring a new drug to the market, at an average cost of $2 billion. A new drug compound entering Phase I (early stage) testing is estimated to have an 8 percent chance of reaching the market, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
A typical drug discovery process begins with identifying which proteins are associated with a specific disease. Candidate drug compounds are combined with target proteins in a process known as binding to determine the drug's effectiveness (efficacy) and/or harmful side effects (toxicity). Target proteins are proteins known to bind with drug compounds in order for the pharmaceutical to work.