(Press-News.org) Before orally administered drugs can make their way throughout the body, they must first bind to membrane proteins called drug transporters, which carry compounds across the intestinal tract and help them reach their intended targets. But because one drug can bind to several different drug transporters, they may struggle to get past this gut barrier, potentially leading to decreased drug absorption and efficacy. If another drug is added to the mix, interactions between the two compounds and their transporters can cause dangerous side effects.
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and MIT have designed a model that analyzes the flow of drugs through tissues and uses machine learning to predict how specific compounds will interact with different transporters. When they used pig tissue to test their machine learning model on 50 approved and investigational drugs, they identified 58 previously unknown drug-transporter interactions and 1,810,270 unknown potential interactions between different drugs.
“Our model has the potential to help accelerate drug discovery and allow drugmakers to better understand safety concerns associated with mixing different medicines,” said senior author Giovanni Traverso, MD, PhD, MBBCH a gastroenterologist in the Brigham’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Endoscopy.
in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
END
Researchers use machine learning to predict how ingested drugs will interact with transport proteins
2024-02-22
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New detection method aims to warn of landslide tsunamis
2024-02-22
University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers have devised a way to remotely detect large landslides within minutes of occurrence and to quickly determine whether they are close to open water and present a tsunami hazard.
They write in a new paper that their method of determining a landslide’s location, volume and potential impact is rapid enough to support the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s goal of issuing a tsunami warning within 5 minutes of a landslide.
“The warming climate is causing glaciers to retreat, leaving behind valleys whose mountainsides and hillsides have lost their ...
Little groundwater recharge in ancient Mars aquifer, according to new models
2024-02-22
Mars was once a wet world. The geological record of the Red Planet shows evidence for water flowing on the surface – from river deltas to valleys carved by massive flash floods.
But a new study shows that no matter how much rainfall fell on the surface of ancient Mars, very little of it seeped into an aquifer in the planet’s southern highlands.
A graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin made the discovery by modeling groundwater recharge dynamics for the aquifer using a range of methods ...
Human-AI coworking
2024-02-21
Though artificial intelligence decreases human error in experimentation, human experts outperform AI when identifying causation or working with small data sets.
To capitalize on AI and researcher strengths, ORNL scientists, in collaboration with colleagues at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, developed a human-AI collaboration recommender system for improved experimentation performance.
During experiments, the system’s machine learning algorithms, described in npj Computational Materials, display preliminary ...
Vlasov and Bashir groups develop nanoscale device for brain chemistry analysis
2024-02-21
Longstanding challenges in biomedical research such as monitoring brain chemistry and tracking the spread of drugs through the body require much smaller and more precise sensors. A new nanoscale sensor that can monitor areas 1,000 times smaller than current technology and can track subtle changes in the chemical content of biological tissue with sub-second resolution, greatly outperforming standard technologies.
The device, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is silicon-based and takes advantage of techniques developed for microelectronics manufacturing. ...
MD Anderson researchers receive over $25.5 million in CPRIT funding
2024-02-21
HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today was awarded 16 grants totaling over $25.5 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) in support of cancer screening, early detection and prevention programs, faculty recruitment, and groundbreaking cancer research across all areas of the institution.
“We are grateful for CPRIT’s continued funding of impactful cancer research and prevention programs at MD Anderson, which propels our efforts to deliver new breakthroughs and to advance our mission to end cancer,” said Peter WT Pisters, M.D., president of MD Anderson. “These efforts are pivotal to our institutional strategy ...
Hippo signaling pathway gives new insight into systemic sclerosis
2024-02-21
Systemic sclerosis causes the skin to tighten and harden resulting in a potentially fatal autoimmune condition that is associated with lung fibrosis and kidney disease.
University of Michigan Health researchers have studied the pathology of systemic sclerosis to understand better the disease and identify key pathways in the disease process that can be targeted therapeutically.
A research team led by University of Michigan Health’s Dinesh Khanna, M.B.B.S., M.Sc., professor of rheumatology and Johann Gudjonsson, M.D., Ph.D., professor of dermatology, ...
Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats has long been in flux
2024-02-21
It has been long assumed that Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats was formed as its ancient namesake lake dried up 13,000 years ago. But new research from the University of Utah has gutted that narrative, determining these crusts did not form until several thousand years after Lake Bonneville disappeared, which could have important implications for managing this feature that has been shrinking for decades to the dismay of the racing community and others who revere the saline pan 100 miles west of Salt ...
UM School of Medicine receives $10.6 million in state funding for Abortion Clinical Care Training Program
2024-02-21
A $10.6 million training grant has been awarded to the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) to administer Maryland’s Abortion Clinical Care Training Program. The grant will be used to expand the number of healthcare professionals with abortion care training, increase the racial and ethnic diversity among health care professionals with abortion care education, and support the identification of clinical sites needing training.
“Our training will target a major ...
Outsmarting chemo-resistant ovarian cancer
2024-02-21
· Most women with ovarian cancer develop resistance to chemotherapy
· Nanoparticle fools cancer cells and prevents cholesterol from entering
· More than 18,000 women a year die from ovarian cancer
CHICAGO --- Women diagnosed with ovarian cancer may initially respond well to chemotherapy, but the majority of them will develop resistance to treatment and die from the disease.
Now Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered the Achilles heel of chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancer — its hunger for cholesterol — and how to sneakily use that to destroy it.
In a new study, scientists first showed that chemotherapy-resistant ...
Does Russia stand to benefit from climate change?
2024-02-21
“There’s a narrative out there about climate change that says there are winners and losers. Even if most of the planet might lose from the changing climate, certain industries and countries stand to benefit. And Russia is usually at the tip of people’s tongues, with Russian officials even making the claim that Russia is a potential winner.”
This portrayal, described by Debra Javeline, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and lead author on the recently published study “Russia in a changing climate,” was debated ...