Training in Pharmacoinformatics(RMI)

描述(由申请人提供)： 要求为9个博士后和6个博士后职位提供支助，以建立药物信息学跨学科领域的培训方案。之所以提出这一计划，是因为目前发现新药的方法没有充分利用生物信息学、基因组学、计算机等领域的进展，因此，药物发现的速度落后于这些领域的突破。近年来，正在开发的新药的流水线并没有增加，因此，极少数新药承担了在开发大量新信息和将其整合到可用和可获得的系统之前发展起来的日益昂贵的过程的巨大成本。我们提出了一个全面、综合的计划来培训下一代科学家：(1)使用信息学方法来识别候选药物靶向的生物分子，(2)使用结构基因组学、化学信息学和基于结构的设计来开发针对选定生物分子和结构的化学物质家族，以及(3)在生物测试之前使用ADMET(吸收、分布、新陈代谢、消除和毒性)图谱和计算疗效预测来选择可行的候选药物。培训将侧重于以电子计算机方法实现这些目标。机构间培训将由来自墨西哥湾沿岸财团在休斯顿-加尔维斯顿地区的六个机构(贝勒医学院、M.D.安德森癌症中心、莱斯大学、休斯顿大学、德克萨斯大学健康科学中心和加尔维斯顿的德克萨斯大学医学部)的63名培训人员进行，并将利用与共同导师一起进行的研究培训、教学课程、研讨会、务虚会和职业发展活动。博士前实习生将被录取并在本国机构获得第一年的支持，2-4年的研究生培训将在竞争的基础上发放津贴。国内机构将授予博士学位。博士后实习生将获得最多两年的支持。拟议中的计划旨在培养未来的药物发现研究领导者。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Support is requested for 9 pre-doctoral and 6 postdoctoral positions to establish a training program in the interdisciplinary area of Pharmacoinformatics. This program is proposed because current approaches to the discovery of new drugs have not fully capitalized on advances in bioinformatics, genomics, computing and other fields, and consequently, the rate of drug discovery has lagged behind breakthroughs in these areas. The pipeline of new drugs under development has not increased in recent years, and a very small number of new drugs are thus responsible for bearing the enormous costs of an increasingly expensive process that evolved prior to development of massive amounts of new information and the ability to integrate it into usable and accessible systems. We propose a comprehensive, integrated program to train the next generation of scientists to: (1) use informatics approaches to identify bio-molecules that are candidates for drug targeting, (2) use structural genomics, chemoinformatics, and structure-based design to develop families of chemicals to target selected bio-molecules and structures, and (3) use ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, and toxicity) profiling and computational predictions of efficacy to select viable drug candidates prior to biological testing. Training will emphasize in silico approaches to achieve these goals. Inter-institutional training will be conducted by sixty-three training faculty from the six institutions of the Gulf Coast Consortia (Baylor College of Medicine, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University, the University of Houston, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston) in the Houston - Galveston area and will utilize research training with co-mentors, didactic courses, seminars, retreats, and career development activities. Pre-doctoral trainees will matriculate and receive first year support at their home institutions, and stipends will be awarded on a competitive basis for years 2-4 of graduate training. The home institution will award the Ph.D. Postdoctoral trainees will receive support for two years maximum. The proposed program is designed to train future leaders in drug discovery research.