You are cordially invited to the Bioinformatics Colloquium tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday March 4, 2014 from 4:30- 6:00pm in Bull Run Hall #249, Prince William Campus. ?


Topic: Drug Discovery Today

Speaker: David Toth (University of Mary Washington)



Abstract:


Pharmaceutical companies have come under fire for charging high prices for drugs that treat or cure terrible diseases.  People are told that the cost of the drugs is not just for the pills themselves, but also to recoup the cost of researching and developing the drugs and enable the development of the next important pharmaceutical.  In order to decrease the time taken and cost of developing new drugs, the process of drug discovery today has shifted from a significantly wet lab based activity to a signifcantly computer based process.  The use of computers enables us to search for drugs to treat or cure diseases much faster and cheaper.

We'll talk about the basics of the process of virtual screening, the computer technique used to speed up the drug discovery process.  We'll discuss the hardware and software involved and why it takes more than a desktop computer to effectively conduct virtual screens.  Finally, we'll give some examples of how we have been using virtual screening to search for a cure to hisoplsmosis and a peek at our results to date.



Linda D. Chilin
Administrative Assistant
School of Systems Biology
George Mason University | 10900 University Blvd MSN 5B3
Manassas, VA 20110
Phone: 703-993-8400