AHA, LLNL announce partnership to speed up drug discovery

The American Heart Association (AHA) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are joining forces to reduce the cost of drug discovery and the time it takes a new drug to enter the marketplace.

Announced at the AHA’s scientific symposium Nov. 15, the partnership will involve creating computational and experimental tools to validate drug hypotheses that have higher probabilities of success. This could potentially cut the time to market in half, according to a press release issued by the AHA, which said it currently takes an average of 10 years and $2.6 billion for a new medicine to be commercialized.

“Some form of cardiovascular disease affects more than one in every three adult Americans,” said AHA CEO Nancy Brown. “As part of the American Heart Association’s Center for Accelerated Drug Discovery, we are committed to take the guess work out of drug effectiveness by collaborating with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to help patients alleviate not only heart disease, but also suffering for all people managing other chronic conditions.”

Under the partnership, LLNL scientists and engineers will use super computers to predict how drugs bind to their target proteins.

“The computing infrastructure at LLNL will enable machine learning and ultimately get safe drugs to the marketplace quicker,” said Felice Lightstone, LLNL’s principal investigator on the project. “By bringing world class, leading edge engineering and high impact biological fields together, we can develop a comprehensive reference atlas of cell-protein targets to accelerate and hone drug discovery.”