Docking Hero

Why does the university need a superhero like you?

Developing a cure takes years of analyzing data and huge amounts of money. Therefore, universities concentrate their resources and computing power on more frequently occurring diseases. We want to improve this process in two ways: By handing over calculations to you, the players, and by looking for a cure in existing drugs.

What is Drug Repurposing?

Finding a cure often means developing a new drug. However, the approval of new drugs can require 10 to 15 years of clinical trials and can cost up to 2 billion dollars. That's why we are looking for new areas of application for existing drugs. This process is called Drug repurposing.

Where are the data sets coming from?

The universities combine and process data from various databases and send us datasets suitable for calculation. These calculations are quite tricky to get right, so we use the industry-proven program AutoDock Vina to crunch the numbers. The amount of drugs and substances in databases like ZINC is staggering and there are millions of potential combinations that we want to examine.

What exactly is the app calculating?

The app calculates how well various drugs fit to receptors in the human body. The term for this is protein-ligand docking. Imagine a key and a lock: The protein is the lock and the ligands are the keys. Only certain keys fit into the lock. As an example, you may have heard how caffeine works in the human brain. Your body produces Adenosine to prevent your brain from being overworked.

How will my calculations contribute to science?

Your calculations could be the important first hint towards which drugs might fit with certain receptors. This helps to find the most promising candidates for rigorous real world testing. Your discoveries will not only be useful for Uveal Melanoma, but they will also be helpful for researchers to understand interactions of many different drugs and the human body.