While most people think of the conventional lab space when they think about cancer research, Jack Tuszynski immediately thinks of a computer-specifically, the supercomputer accessed through the University of Alberta's IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS), which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Tuszynski is the Allard Chair in Experimental Oncology, and capitalizes on the computing abilities and expertise of CAS to model potential targets of pharmaceutical agents known as small molecules in hopes of finding new uses for drugs that are already approved for use or for novel investigational drugs. The supercomputer uses algorithms to scan through publicly available databases of molecules in addition to an extensive database created at the University of Alberta, bringing together "millions and millions" of potential matches. "We were given access to one of the largest super computers in the world. Instead of running smaller clusters of computers for one, two or three years, we can finish the job in a matter of weeks, in most cases," Tuszynski says.
The results produce a list of the most promising matches, which are later compared with libraries of similar compounds to find best small molecule matches for specific protein targets. The most promising results are moved forward to testing on cancer cells and in animal models before they can be approved for clinical use.
"They challenged us to test the impossible, and to find something that is astronomically complicated," Tuszynski says in reference to working with IBM scientists. "We were able to bring a level of expertise to the international level of competition."
Learn more about the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies' anniversary and the research conducted there.