Pharmaceutical Business review

Tokyo Institute, Astellas form joint research deal against neglected tropical diseases

The research will leverage Tokyo Tech’s TSUBAME2.0 supercomputer for the discovery of drugs for patients suffering from dengue fever/dengue hemorrhagic fever.

The first step of the collaborative research that is divided into two phases includes data mining of public information to gather effective knowledge about the dengue virus drug discovery.

Under the second step, compounds with potent anti-dengue virus activities will be identified by performing in-silico screening.

According to the deal, Tokyo Tech will be responsible for data mining and for in-silico screening calculations of commercially available compounds.

Astellas will prepare input data for data mining, selecting, and listing of hit compounds to be evaluated based on the in-silico screening calculations.