News item posted on 2013-04-02

Virtual High-Throughput Screening Workshop on April 26

The Meiler Lab is hosting a Virtual High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Workshop on April 26 at 9am - 5pm in Stevenson Center, Room 5119. The Meiler Lab has produced a user-friendly platform that allows researchers without specific training in quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) methodology to design and execute virtual screens. The HTS Workshop will cover the entire workflow of the QSAR methodology providing an introduction and training to interested researchers.

Although the HTS process can be expensive and time-consuming, it still offers the best chance of identifying new molecular probes de novo, yet the yield of hits can be low. With HTS data now increasingly available in the public domain, methods for ligand-based computer-aided drug discovery (LB-CADD) have the ability to accelerate and increase the quality of probe development and drug discovery efforts while reducing costs. The software suite created by the Meiler Lab has been specifically designed for this task.

The platform uses QSAR to develop a mathematical function that relates chemical structure to the biological activity of interest. The application of machine learning techniques, such as artificial neural networks, allows the development of nonlinear mathematical functions, a marked improvement over traditional QSAR approaches that rely solely on linear regression analysis.

To learn more about the power of virtual HTS or to register for the workshop, contact Will Lowe. The workshop is open to all Vanderbilt researchers no matter their expertise in the process of virtual screen design.


Author: Karen D. Davis