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Data Science Is Delivering As data science changes the way drugs are discovered and developed, pharmacy schools are exploring the possible benefits for research and patient care. By Joseph A. Cantlupe At the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at the University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy, there were hints in January that the world was changing. As the coronavirus pandemic began to emerge on the West Coast, much of academia was on vacation. Inside the QBI scientists scrambled, trying to figure out something massive and unknown: what made the coronavirus tick. Over the next few months, the lab went full bore to examine the intricacies of the coronavirus, spilling its research across three countries and enlisting more than 200 scientists. QBI Director Dr. Nevan Krogan formed the QBI Coronavirus Research Group, eyeing multiple research projects related to COVID-19. Researchers pooled their expertise in biochemistry, virology, and structural, computational, chemical and systems biology to understand the intricacies of how the coronavirus effectively undermines human cells to replicate itself rapidly, enabling spread to others, and what could be done to thwart it. They began to explore immense possibilities in their research: rapid diagnosis using gene-editing technology to track the spread and evolution of COVID-19, and diagnosing infected patients with no or minimal symptoms. The researchers tapped into the world of data science, which is constantly evolving and changing the way drugs are discovered and developed
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Academic Pharmacy NOW 2020 Issue 3
and how treatments are delivered Data Opening Doors to patients. Pharmacy schools are “It’s all data-driven, what we piece moving forward to be part of this trend, together in this pipeline, and show especially in research, where data and how fast it can move,” Krogan said. computational methods are becoming “We interface and try to find the right a major part of pharmaceutical and targets to have an integrative suite health sciences. of tools for the underlying biology. It’s sharing across the board and it is For Krogan, his around-the-clock done in a more fully open way across work with his research team was an academia.“ opportunity to embrace research unburdened by bureaucracy and focused on a team approach welcoming to students. “We had a foundation for collaboration, which doesn’t happen overnight. It was expedited in an exciting way,” Krogan said. Noting the progress that the multidisciplinary team made, he said similar academic work “would have taken a year, but it came together in a few weeks.” As the QBI Coronavirus Research Group set out to uncover the human proteins enabling the coronavirus to spread, it looked at how human and virus proteins interact and studied the clusters they formed. In the meantime, the team identified at least 75 over-thecounter prescription and developmentstage drug compounds that they said had the potential to target cellular proteins that are possibly “hijacked” by the virus to promote its spread. The Krogan team, which included 38 scientists, made maps of cells both in healthy and disease states and disseminated the information around the world for other researchers to examine.
At the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, Dr. Steven M. Smith, assistant professor, focuses on heart disease, stroke prevention and hypertension control. He also is beginning to examine the coronavirus and possible links to hypertension and its treatment. In his research, Smith aims to “improve the way we inform treatment decisions and interact in multidisciplinary teams in the future through data visualization and clinical support.” Smith, who is in the pharmacotherapy & translational research department and was AACP’s second NAM Fellow, also runs a family medicine fellowship at Florida and is involved in training. Data flows through many areas of healthcare. It involves interactions with patients, providers and insurers and includes medical records, administrative claims, such as billing and patient pharmacy data related to medication adherence, and even patient-reported outcomes. Fundamental issues in his work include data collection and
