The new database of 1,700 proteins in motion allows a more efficient design of medications. MoDEL contains 30% of human therapeutic targets, and the goal is to cover 80% within three years.
After four years conducting intensive calculations using the MareNostrum supercomputer from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, scientists led by Modesto Orozco from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) have presented the world’s most extensive database on protein motions. The new video databank, called MoDEL, includes more than 1,700 proteins and is partially accessible on the internet for researchers from any country in the world. MoDEL has been created in order to study the basic biology of proteins and to accelerate and facilitate the design of new drugs.
“Today we are designing drugs as if the proteins against which they have to act were static, and this is a very important reason explaining the failure in the development of new pharmaceutical therapies, because this is simply not realistic. With MoDEL this problem is solved because it offers the user between 10,000 and 100,000 photos per protein, which lends them movement and allows the design to be more exact”, says Orozco, head of the “Molecular Modeling and Bioinformatics” group at IRB Barcelona, director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s Life Sciences Program, and professor at the University of Barcelona. According to this researcher, various pharmaceutical companies are already using the MoDEL strategy to develop the first drugs against cancer and inflammatory diseases, which could be unveiled this year.