In-Silico mergers & Drug Repurposing In Anti-Cancer Research

In our previous story on In Silico Inc mediated personalised medicine we had provided details on how this pharmaceutical company is gaining scientific momentum to come up with newer methods to fight cancer and ageing. It is important to note that while working with computers people often experience problems with simple methods analysis of large datasets. Further, it is also important that more companies should work with hand in hand in pursuit of single solution to fight against cancer and ageing. 

Recently, a Belgium based company, In SilicoScreen announced merger with In Silico Inc. We know that ageing and cancer are inter-related problems. And it is an extremely controversial concept if we can consider ageing a disease or not? But imagine 100 years ago if  some one would have said that man can fly; people would have seen that person with same gaze as they do when we say that there is a chance that ageing can be reversed.  It strengthens our belief when more people invest their precious time in solving most important and crucial problem of ageing.

In a recent press release of Eureka alert Quentin Vanhaelen, PhD, founder and ex-CEO of InSilicoScreen said he was happy to work with In Silico Inc. "The sole aim was to build models of human ageing and regenerative processes to find new interventions and test the current ones on multiple levels from single cells to entire organs".

Additionally  to the this merger we know that drug repositioning or finding newer application to the existing pool of approved drugs has been one the most economic and smarter way of using drugs. One of the most common example is Rapamycin once used as anti fungal is now used fighting cancer by targeting mTOR pathway. 

In the recent press release made in Interprise Tech Insilco Inc has been using Graphic Processing Unit (GPU)-accelerated NVIDIA for finding newer and faster ways of finding newer application for existing pool of 20,000 medicines that are already in use in market. They have their four DevBox desktop supercomputer, using TESLA K80 GPU accelerators and four Titan X graphics cards for a total of 28TF of processing power. 

Drug discovery is a tedious and time consuming process. In Silico Inc's newer idea has caught attention of investors (Deep Knowledge Ventures, Hong Kong), Industry Analysts and Pharmaceutical Companies. In Silico Inc. talks about the deep neural net concept of finding solution to anti ageing and age related problems. Various most commonly explored tools of the company includes

a) Deep Pharma: GPU based virtual laboratory to simulate tissue based testing of compounds on diseased or aged cells.

b) Onco finder: For checking the efficacy of anticancer drugs on patients cancer samples.

Onco finder is a decision making tool for doctors, which helps them to decide what type of anticancer to be used in specific cancer case. 

Important ongoing projects: Insilco's first project is to research on ageing of skin. It includes studying the impact of ultraviolet radiation on skin. Dr. Zhavaronkov said that Insilco have predicted few compounds, which may improve skin ageing that may be announced next year. They said if we can change the condition for skin then there is a possibility to do the same for other tissues of human body.

Additional info can be read from here:

http://www.enterprisetech.com/2015/12/09/gpu-accelerated-deep-neural-nets-look-for-cures-that-already-exist/