SBIR Phase I: OpenBio Workbench for Sharing of Mathematical Models in Drug Discovery

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将测试一个名为OpenBio的软件平台的可行性，该平台将使药物发现的研究人员能够轻松访问和共享数学模型和模型结果。 建模变得越来越重要，这是由于FDA推动药物发现过程现代化以及系统生物学等新兴领域的出现。然而，建模的广泛采用受到限制，因为目前的实践需要生物科学研究人员通常不具备的编程和计算技能。因此，这些研究人员掌握着制作模型所需的大量生物学信息，并将从建模研究中获得的洞察力中受益匪浅，但他们很少参与建模研究。本项目将通过开发一种新的代码生成技术来解决这一限制，该技术将把来自不同异构源的模型转换为支持Web的GUI驱动形式，无需所需的建模技能即可轻松使用。这个工作台的商业价值是显着的，因为制药行业正在投资于数学建模和系统生物学，旨在克服药物开发的成本飙升和自20世纪90年代以来新药发现的停滞。系统生物学产品和服务的市场预计将以66%的年复合增长率增长，到2009年将超过10亿美元。此外，发达国家的人口老龄化将导致医疗保健成本急剧增加，同时存在严重的预算压力（来自政府和私人保险公司），以控制医疗保健成本。因此，加快研究周期并降低新药和治疗方法的开发成本的方法将变得越来越重要。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will test the feasibility of a software platform called OpenBio Workbench that will enable researchers in drug discovery to easily access and share mathematical models and model results. Modeling is becoming increasingly important, motivated by the FDA's drive to modernize the drug discovery process and the advent of emerging fields such as Systems Biology. A broad adoption of modeling has been limited, however, because the current practice requires programming and computational skills not typically possessed by researchers in biological sciences. As a result these researchers, who hold the vast biological information needed to make models and would immensely benefit from the insight gained from modeling studies, rarely participate in modeling studies. This project will address this limitation by developing a novel code-generation technology that will transform models from diverse heterogeneous sources into a Web-enabled GUI-driven form that can be readily used without the required modeling skills. The commercial value of this workbench is significant as the pharmaceutical industry is investing in mathematical modeling and Systems Biology aiming to overcome both the sky-rocketing costs of drug development and the stagnation in the discovery of new drugs since the 1990's. The market for Systems Biology products and services is expected to grow at an annual compound rate of 66% exceeding $1 billion by 2009. Further, aging populations in developed countries are going to cause sharp increases in health care costs, while at the same time there are serious budgetary pressures (both from government and private insurers) to keep health care costs under control. Thus, methods that speed up the research cycle and reduce development costs for new drugs and treatments are going to become increasingly important.