UCSF School of Pharmacy Leads $30M Award to Speed Drug Development with AI

James Fraser, PhD, who chairs the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences (BTS) in the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine, is leading a multidisciplinary team that will receive up to $30 million in federal funding to identify what he calls “anti-targets,” the sites on proteins that drugs should avoid, to prevent side effects before drugs go to clinical trials.

Researchers are using AI to map the terrain of these “off” or unwanted targets. They hope the map will speed drug development and lower costs by avoiding problems that only become apparent late in development.

The project will be augmented by data from two National Institutes of Health (NIH) Antiviral Drug Discovery Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern: one under the QBI Coronavirus Research Group at UCSF’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute led by Nevan Krogan, PhD; the other at the AI-Driven Structure-Enabled Antiviral Platform Discovery Consortium.

Since 1984, scientists have learned that most anti-target sites are found on a relatively small subset of all the proteins the body produces. Fraser said that having AI do the refinement work on the front end will significantly speed drug development, and he expects to see progress very soon.

“Once we have these open-source datasets and models, every biotech company will be able to use them and hopefully be motivated to contribute their data to improve them,” said Fraser. “It will really revolutionize the way we create new drugs.”

More

• UCSF Receives Major Award to Speed Drug Development with AI

• Fraser named chair of UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences