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

这个小型企业创新研究第二阶段项目将开发一个名为OpenBio工作台的创新软件平台，使药物发现方面的研究人员能够轻松访问和共享数学模型和模型结果。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，建模正变得越来越重要。然而，建模的广泛采用受到了限制，因为目前的做法需要编程和计算技能，而生物科学中的实验研究人员通常不具备这些技能。在第二阶段项目中，该工具的功能将得到增强，允许用户通过包括实验数据来校准模型，添加创新的高级建模工具，如模型构建。该工作台的潜在商业价值很高，因为制药行业正在数学建模和系统生物学方面投入大量资金，旨在克服药物开发的高成本和自1990年S以来新药发现的停滞。此外，发达国家的人口老龄化将导致医疗成本的急剧增加，同时，在控制医疗成本方面存在巨大的预算压力(来自政府和私人保险公司)。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 Phase II project will develop an innovative 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 increasing 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 experimental researchers in biological sciences. In the Phase II project, the tool's capabilities will be augmented by allowing users to calibrate models by including experimental data, adding innovative advanced modeling tools such as model building.The potential commercial value of this workbench is high as the pharmaceutical industry is investing significantly in mathematical modeling and Systems Biology aiming to overcome both the high costs of drug development and the stagnation in the discovery of new drugs since the 1990's. 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.