Feature - Proofing an ancient wisdom: medicinal herbs meet grid technology
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Medicinal herbs have been part of Thailand's way of life since ancient times. This is especially true in remote rural areas, where drugs are expensive and ancient wisdom still has an effect on people's lives. Now, thanks to the efforts of Thai researchers, this wisdom is meeting the hi-tech world. "Thailand has a large number of medicinal herbs, and many drugs are produced based on medicinal herbs," reveals Chak Sangma of the Cheminformatics Research Unit at Kasetsart University, Thailand. "However, many of these drugs are not tested at the chemical level. Hence, it is not very certain which drugs contain which chemical substances, and how they actually cure disease." Searching for molecular secrets To improve this situation, Chak and his team are creating a one-stop-shop: a grid-powered portal where Thai researchers can have centralized access to both the molecular structure of medicinal herbs and molecular docking software. Chak's database currently contains more than 100,000 3D molecular structures. "Using molecular docking we can see how well a potential drug molecule can 'dock' to a disease enzyme, so we can select the most effective drugs without costly experiments," says Chak. |
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Such screening requires huge computing power. For this, Chak and his Access enables a new level of research Chak "By providing access to this data and computing power - Putchong Uthayopas, ThaiGrid The |