Tel Aviv University scientists have developed a computerized tool that will help create new drugs to fight diabetes and congenital metabolic diseases such as obesity
Tel Aviv University
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A team of scientists from Tel Aviv University led by Prof. Eitan Rupin (a member of both the faculty of the School of Computer Science at the Raymond and Berly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences and the faculty of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University) has developed a computerized tool that can in the future help in the creation of new drugs to fight diabetes and congenital metabolic diseases such as obesity. The potential inherent in such a tool, as recently described in the journal Nature Genetics, is that drug developers fighting metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes will be equipped with additional computational aids to create new sophisticated drugs, which will direct the treatment not to a single gene, as current drugs do, but to a combination of genes .
Open The current model is based on previous studies done in Canada and the USA, which deciphered the way genes work in pairs. The new and expanded research conducted at Tel Aviv University, in which professors Yitzhak Malchson, Martin Kopik and master's student David Deutscher also participated, provides additional functional explanations for the role played by 75% of the metabolic genes. "Metabolism is one of the rare cases in systems biology where we have a reliable model for understanding the cellular processes as a whole" says Prof. Rupin. "We hope that in the future this model will serve as a basis for new developments in medicine," adds Rupin.
The team's research path was guided by the question of what role genetics plays in metabolism, which is the basis of all life processes. The study of obesity preoccupies the international community because it is one of the most significant health risk factors that Western society has to deal with. The team of scientists built a computer model, the purpose of which is to predict the way in which the joint action of genes affects the functioning of human metabolism, processes that have so far eluded a precise scientific description.
Prof. Rupin adds that "the innovation was in the development" of a computational method for a computerized 'virtual experiment' with billions of gene combinations.
Prof. Rupin said that the research team combined mathematics and computer science in biological and genetic research and also used the methods of computational (systems) biology, which is considered one of the most talked about approaches in biological and medical research this decade. The end product is raw data that describes how genes control metabolism.
Prof. Rupin explains that the action of the new drugs that affect the metabolism that scientists are developing today is limited because the genes do not necessarily work alone or even in pairs. Most genes work in clusters. And like a hard drive in a computer, which backs up files all the time, genes have a complex system that executes commands and makes sure they are fulfilled.
"Common medicines such as MAO inhibitors for the treatment of depression or Tacrin for the treatment of Alzheimer's, affect the reactions involved in the depletion of certain chemicals in our body. But the action of these contemporary drugs is limited because they are aimed at treating a single gene and do not take into account the fact that genes interact in complex ways," adds Prof. Rupin.
Prof. Rupin estimates that if the scientists can understand and identify all the ways in which genes work together to carry out an order in the body, they will be able to create drugs to treat Alzheimer's, obesity or diabetes, which will be more effective. However, due to the nature of the interactions, the task before us is difficult and complex.
