Research & Development
Epistemic Drug Discovery®
A large computational project with basic research support and broad disease coverage is bringing Prous Institute closer to drug discovery.
At Prous Institute we define Epistemic Drug Discovery® (EDD) as a holistic, knowledge based and proactive approach to drug discovery designed to: develop structure-based models for the prediction of drug efficacy and safety; generate and validate hypotheses through synthesis, in vitro and in vivo pharmacological testing and pharmacogenetic studies. Two pillars uphold EDD: bioinformatics/chemoinformatics and basic research, leading to new bioactive compounds.
Chemoinformatics and Bioinformatics
Powerful in silico
tools (
BioEpisteme®,
PSMEL® and
Conveyor®) are being developed at Prous Institute to accelerate the process of drug discovery and development, reducing the time-cost and attrition rate.
Basic Research Leading to New Bioactive Compounds
Experimental studies at Prous Institute are based on traditional strategies using in vitro and in vivo methods and pharmacogenetics. Organic synthesis and biological testing are carried out at our laboratories in the Barcelona Scientific Park.
Cell cultures are used as models of diseases such as diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. The study of specific cell lines and primary cultures is essential for understanding the mechanisms of induction of cellular processes by selected compounds. Special attention is paid to the investigation of morphological and biochemical indices of autophagic and apoptotic states.
Following strict ethical regulations, Prous Institute uses animal models to investigate the effects of drugs on the entire organism, making it possible to ensure the compound’s therapeutic action and enabling the extrapolation of meaningful data for clinical relevance.
Prous Institute has a special interest in using the zebrafish, which is rapidly gaining acceptance as an in vivo drug discovery model, at different stages of its drug discovery process (target validation, lead discovery and toxicology).
We have begun to apply pharmacogenetics strategies to our drug discovery programs to improve the prediction of drug efficacy or an adverse event.