First of all, I hope that all of you and all of your families and colleagues are safe and well and that this continues until we can see the back of this particularly dangerous disease. Secondly, I must apologise for the interruption in the smooth delivery of these newsletters in the last couple of months. When we went into lockdown in the UK, although I anticipated an increase in the volume of submissions, proposals and revisions I couldn’t have, in my wildest dreams, have envisioned the tsunami of articles coming across my desk. Although this is being coped with at the moment, the knock on effect has impacted upon products such as Newsletters. To catch up, however, I have increased the number of articles available to readers to six, rather than the normal three. I apologise for this, but I hope that you enjoy this month’s offerings.
The first three articles in this newsletter deal with Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning and emphasize the great and growing influence that this branch of science is having upon the development of new drugs. The articles include: “Artificial intelligence in drug development: preent status and future prospects” From Mak and Pichika of the International Medical University of Kuala Lumpur, Malasia. Continuing in this vein is the article from Antonio Lavecchia of the Department of Pharmacy, Napoli, Italy entitled “Deep learning in drug discovery: opportunities, challenges and future prospects”. Finally in this section of Artificial Intelligence is the article entitled “Machine learning on adverse drug reactions for pharmacovigilance by Lee and Chen of La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. This article forms a link between the two (apparently) diverse sections of the newsletter. It is clear that Artificial Intelligence and related techniques are being adopted readily by the Drug Discovery industry, the technology will impact on prediction of compounds more rapidly and assessing their metabolism and potential for unwanted off target effects in addition to the ability to repurpose molecules for new indications, that has been evident in the search for drugs to treat COVID-19 that we have all seen attracting great medial attention in the last few weeks.
Moving on, we come to the topic of Adverse Drug Reactions and as you can see, in some respects there are overlaps between the two fields, following on from this, we have included the article by Thakkar, Li, Liu, Wu, Roberts and Tong of the FDA, ApconiX and the University of Birmingham. The article: “Drug-induced liver injury severity and toxicity (DILIst): binary classification of 1279 drugs by human hepatotoxicity. The investigation revealed the most and least frequent DILI categories and potentially will serve as a resource to avoid DILI from compounds in development. Second in this theme is an article entitled “Drug-induced Rhabdomyolysis Atlas (DIRA) for Idiosyncratic Adverse Drug Reaction Management” by Zhining
Wen, Yu Liang, Yingyi Hao, Brian Delavan, Ruili Huang, Mike Mikailov, Weida Tong, Menglong Li and Zhichao Liu. This extends the previous article by the preparation of a database examining features underpinning the development of rhabdomyolysis as an adverse drug reaction. Last but not least we have made a free download for the article “Adverse drug reactions on sexual functioning: a systematic overview”, by Rineke Gordijn, MartinaTeichert, Melianthe P.J.Nicolai,
Henk W.Elzevier and Henk-Jan Guchelaar. Although not life-threatening as such, the effect of sexual dysfunction is profound and far-reaching. Some 300 drugs have been identified as causing sexual dysfunction, although it is probably underreported in general practice. It is therefore important to make such data available, such that it can be considered when using these drugs in primary care.
Steve Carney was born in Liverpool, England and studied Biochemistry at Liverpool University, obtaining a BSc.(Hons) and then read for a PhD on the Biochemistry and Pathology of Connective Tissue Diseases in Manchester University, in the Departments of Medical Biochemistry and Histopathology. On completion of his PhD he moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, London, where he worked with Professor Helen Muir FRS and Professor Tim Hardingham, on the biochemistry of experimental Osteoarthritis. He joined Eli Lilly and Co. and held a number of positions in Biology R&D, initially in the Connective Tissue Department, but latterly in the Neuroscience Department. He left Lilly to take up his present position as Managing Editor, Drug Discovery Today, at Elsevier. Currently, he also holds an honorary lectureship in Drug Discovery at the University of Surrey, UK. He has authored over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, written several book chapters and has held a number of patents.