Network-based approaches for the indification and mode of action determination of anti-bacterial agents . (NEMOA)

With our consortium we will set up an enabling platform to facilitate drug repurposing and the design of polypharmacological and drug-cocktailing-based strategies. This platform combines in-house phenotypic and molecular characterization with advanced datamining and bioinformatics approaches. Our platform addresses the problems related to current drug discovery pipelines in the following way:

• It offers a platform for drug repurposing by maximally exploiting existing knowledge. For applications with lower market potential (antimicrobials for specific multiple resistant cases, drugs for rare diseases 1) the costs that go together with the drug discovery hamper further developments. To reduce both time and costs associated with drug development, we propose for those cases a strategy based on drug repurposing as it allows bypassing toxicological and pharmacokinetic assessments, which together contribute approximately 40% of the overall cost of bringing a new drug to the market.
• By combining a strategy based on phenotypic characterization with a simultaneous MMOA determination, it combines the advantages of a target-based strategy that starts from the MMOA with the efficacity of a phenotypic screening.
• Providing insight in the MMOA at global cellular level (interference of the drug with signaling and reaction pathways) and not only at a the level of the local interaction between the drug and its target will aid in the design of more complex therapeutics (drug cocktailing, polypharmacology).