Starting September 2012 Prof. Zoran Obradovic will lead a GlaxoSmithKline funded project entitled “Predicting Drug Indications by Integrating Multiple Data Sources.” Finding new indications for existing drugs, or drug repositioning, has been used as a strategy for decades to get drugs to more patients. To predict drug indications for both approved drugs and novel molecules, this project proposes a new approach based on the observation that similar drugs are indicated for similar diseases, and utilizes multiple drug-drug and/or disease-disease similarity measures for the prediction task.
Chemical similarity has been considered as the most widely used metric for drug indications prediction, following the hypothesis that drug compounds with similar structures and chemical properties have similar use as a therapy. This study will explore to what extent the similarity from other sources (e.g., clinical side-effects, drug targets, gene expression, and bioassay) also implies similar drug indications. Furthermore, the project will study whether combining the similarity metrics from multiple sources can increase the accuracy of drug indications prediction.