Smart Tools for Smarter Outcomes

At Prous Institute we are developing a series of chemoinformatic tools and methods (SYMMETRY®) to predict the biological activity and safety of proposed drug-like compounds prior to their synthesis and laboratory and animal studies in our Center for Drug Evaluation. 

Applications

  • Drug repositioning by identifying new targets and therapeutic uses for known drugs.
  • Patent and article content repositioning by identifying new targets and therapeutic uses of compounds dormant in patent literature and articles.
  • Drug target identification using side effect similarity.
  • Discovering interconnections between drug targets.
  • Identifying new single molecules modulating multiple complementary targets. This could be a promising alternative to combination therapy, which is necessary when drugs given alone do not achieve sufficient control of disease.
  • Finding targets for compounds whose mechanisms of action are not well defined. We estimate that the mechanism of action of 56-59% of the small molecules that are marketed or under development remains to be established.
  • Managing large sets of natural products according to their predicted biological activity. Although experimental screening of these compounds is the best way to obtain high quality information, it is very time consuming and costly.
  • Predicting adverse reactions and toxic effects based on dependent or independent molecular mechanisms of action.
  • Selecting lead candidates for further evaluation.
  • Highlighting possible molecular mechanisms for cross-talk between different cellular processes (e.g. autophagy and apoptosis).