title: Applying computational modeling to drug discovery and development.
abstract: Computational models of cells, tissues and organisms are necessary for increased understanding of biological systems. In particular, modeling approaches will be crucial for moving biology from a descriptive to a predictive science. Pharmaceutical companies identify molecular interventions that they predict will lead to therapies at the organism level, suggesting that computational biology can play a key role in the pharmaceutical industry. We discuss pharmaceutically-relevant computational modeling approaches currently used as predictive tools. Specific examples demonstrate how companies can employ these computational models to improve the efficiency of transforming targets into therapies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Pfizer Research Technology Center, and Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. nkumar@mit.edu
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Bart S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Hendriks
authors.forename: Kevin A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Janes
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: de Graaf
authors.forename: Douglas A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Lauffenburger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D015195:Drug Design; D004345:Drug Industry; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D015398:Signal Transduction