Shaving time to test antidotes for nerve agents
Monday, February 29, 2016 - 23:00
in Physics & Chemistry
Imagine you wanted to know how much energy it took to bike up a mountain, but couldn’t finish the ride to the peak yourself. So, to get the total energy required, you and a team of friends strap energy meters to your bikes and ride the route in a relay, then add up your individual energy inputs. Researchers are currently using a similar approach, powered by world-class supercomputers, to simulate the energy requirements for candidate drug molecules to permeate cell membranes – shaving weeks of compound testing by determining in advance how readily they’ll enter cells to perform their activity.