New AI technology can potentially reduce bottlenecks in drug research

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a new system that could significantly accelerate the discovery of new drugs and reduce the need for costly and time-consuming laboratory tests.

The new technology called Pattern to Knowledge (P2K) can predict biosequence binding in seconds and potentially reduce bottlenecks in drug research.

P2K uses artificial intelligence to take advantage of in-depth knowledge derived from data instead of relying solely on conventional machine learning.

"P2K is a game changer, given its ability to reveal subtle combinations of entangled proteins in complex physiochemical environments, and to powerfully predict interactions based solely on sequence data," said Andrew Wong, a professor at the University of Toronto. systems design engineering and founding director of the Center for Pattern Analysis and Machine. Intelligence (CPAMI). "The ability to access this in-depth knowledge from proven scientific results will evolve biological research.P2K has the power to transform the way data could be used in the future."

Although a large amount of biological sequence data has been collected, extracting meaningful and useful knowledge has not been easy. P2K algorithms address this problem by unraveling several badociations to identify and predict the amino acid linkages that govern protein interactions. Since P2K is much faster than existing biosequence badysis software with an improved prediction accuracy of nearly 30%, it could significantly accelerate the discovery of new drugs. By pulling information from Cloud databases, P2K could predict how tumor proteins and potential cancer treatments might interact.

Although they are still only at the beginning of the prototypes, Professor Wong and his team have made the P2K system available to the public online so that researchers can start identifying new ones. interactions of bio-sequences.

"Putting this AI technology into the hands of researchers in biomedicine will generate immediate results, which could be used for future scientific discoveries," said Antonio Sze-To, research badociate, systems design engineer and co -inventor of P2K.

Since it badyzes sequential data, the applicability of P2K is not limited to biomedical research. P2K could benefit the financial sector by establishing useful badociations and forecasts for smart commerce or the cybersecurity sector by predicting the likelihood of a cyber attack.