Scientists find new uses for existing drugs by mining gene-activity data banks
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - 22:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Researchers have paired up medicines and maladies with help from a molecular matchmaker. When the scientists applied an "opposites attract" algorithm to publicly available databases, surprising sparks flew: They found potential compatibilities between numerous existing drugs and diseases for which those drugs had never before been thought to be beneficial.