Model predicts a drug's likelihood of causing birth defects

When pregnant women need medications, there is often concern about possible effects on the foetus. Although some drugs are clearly recognised to cause birth defects (thalidomide being a notorious example), and others are generally recognised as safe, surprisingly little is known about most drugs' level of risk. Researchers in the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program (CHIP) have created a preclinical model for predicting a drug's teratogenicity (tendency to cause foetal malformations) based on characterising the genes that it targets...

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