Virtual Human Offers Insights Into HIV Drug Efficacy

EU-funded scientists have used a prototype of a Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) to simulate the efficacy of an HIV drug in blocking a key protein used by the virus. The VPH concept involves linking networks of computers from around the world to simulate the inner workings of the human body. With it, scientists can study the effects of a drug and see what is happening at the organ, tissue, cell and molecular levels.

Currently, the VPH is still in the early stages of development, but researchers hope that eventually doctors will be able to use it to develop personalised treatments for their patients.

In this latest study, scientists from University College London (UCL) in the UK ran simulations to predict how strongly the HIV-inhibiting drug saquinavir would bind to three versions of a viral protein called HIV-1 protease. The protein is used by the virus to propagate itself, and mutated forms of the protein are associated with resistance to saquinavir. The results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Saquinavir is just one of nine drugs designed to block HIV-1 protease. Currently, doctors have no way to match the drugs to the profile of the virus as it mutates in each patient. Instead, they simply prescribe a course of drugs and see if they are working by analysing the patient's immune response.

In the future, these 'trial and error' methods could be phased out as doctors could use the VPH to see which drugs would be most effective in any given patient. However, the computing power required to run these simulations is immense; for this latest study, the sequence of simulations was carried out across several supercomputers on both the UK's National Grid Service and the US TeraGrid.

The work took two weeks and used the same amount of computing power as that needed to perform a long-range weather forecast. The scientists hope that in the future, technological advances could bring down the costs of carrying out such simulations so that health services can afford to pay for them.

"This study represents a first step towards the ultimate goal of 'on-demand' medical computing, where doctors could one day 'borrow' supercomputing time from the national grid to make critical decisions on life-saving treatments," explained Professor Peter Coveney of UCL, who led the research.

"For example, for an HIV patient, a doctor could perform an assay to establish the patient's genotype and then rank the available drugs' efficacy against that patient's profile based on a rapid set of large-scale simulations, enabling the doctor to tailor the treatment accordingly."

Professor Coveney and his team are now looking at all the protease inhibitor drugs in the same way.

EU support for the study came from the ViroLab (A virtual laboratory for decision support in viral diseases treatment) project, which is funded under the Information society technologies thematic area of the Sixth Framework Programme.

Meanwhile, Professor Coveney is also involved in the VPH Initiative, which has received €72 million from the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The initiative aims to boost collaboration between clinicians and scientists to explore the possibilities of patient-specific medical treatments based on the latest modelling and simulation methods.

For further information, please visit:

Copyright ©European Communities, 2008
Neither the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, nor any person acting on its behalf, is responsible for the use, which might be made of the attached information. The attached information is drawn from the Community R&D Information Service (CORDIS). The CORDIS services are carried on the CORDIS Host in Luxembourg - http://cordis.europa.eu. Access to CORDIS is currently available free-of-charge.

Most Popular Now

AI Distinguishes Glioblastoma from Look-…

A Harvard Medical School–led research team has developed an AI tool that can reliably tell apart two look-alike cancers found in the brain but with different origins, behaviors, and treatments. The...

AI Body Composition Measurements can Pre…

Adiposity - or the accumulation of excess fat in the body - is a known driver of cardiometabolic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease...

AI can Strengthen Pandemic Preparedness

How to identify the next dangerous virus before it spreads among people is the central question in a new Comment in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. In it, researchers discuss how...

New AI Tool Scans Social Media for Hidde…

A new artificial intelligence tool can scan social media data to discover adverse events associated with consumer health products, according to a study published September 30th in the open-access journal...

'Future-Guided' AI Improves Se…

In the world around us, many things exist in the context of time: a bird’s path through the sky is understood as different positions over a period of time, and...

Yousif's Story with Sectra and The …

Embarking on healthcare technology career after leaving his home as a refugee during his teenage years, Yousif is passionate about making a difference. He reflects on an apprenticeship in which...

New AI Tools Help Scientists Track How D…

Artificial intelligence (AI) can solve problems at remarkable speed, but it’s the people developing the algorithms who are truly driving discovery. At The University of Texas at Arlington, data scientists...

Study Finds One-Year Change on CT Scans …

Researchers at National Jewish Health have shown that subtle increases in lung scarring, detected by an artificial intelligence-based tool on CT scans taken one year apart, are associated with disease...

AI Tool Offers Deep Insight into the Imm…

Researchers explore the human immune system by looking at the active components, namely the various genes and cells involved. But there is a broad range of these, and observations necessarily...

New Antibiotic Targets IBD - and AI Pred…

Researchers at McMaster University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made two scientific breakthroughs at once: they not only discovered a brand-new antibiotic that targets inflammatory bowel diseases...

Highland to Help Companies Seize 'N…

Health tech growth partner Highland has today revealed its new identity - reflecting a sharper focus as it helps health tech companies to find market opportunities, convince target audiences, and...