The Supercomputer Center of Barcelona has helped create a fresh method of designing drugs more rapidly using normal laboratory PCs and selecting antiretroviral treatments.

Such molecules are in charge of metabolic and care processes in the body.

To address that compute resourcing problem, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) created applications called Protein Energy Landscape Exploration, or PELE, for examining protein structures, reachable via an internet server.

Working the Catalan AIDS research institute, with IrsiCaixa, BSC has used to develop a bioinformatics approach to forecast the effectiveness

The system unites computational protein modelling, identification of genetic mutations, HIV DNA sequencing, and simulations of how drugs bind with the proteins of the virus.

But, above all, the process can be performed on comparatively small scale computing gear, including a regular PC, available in any lab in less than 24 hours.

Until now, patient information was used to forecast the impact of HIV mutations on the effectiveness of drugs. A drawback with this strategy is that it can not cater for mutations for.

The BSC- on the changes and IrsiCaixa system uses PELE to make forecasts based on the features of each genetic mutation the mutation creates in the virus’ proteins, which act as targets for drugs.

“Almost everybody’s using a deterministic method of performing molecular simulations. We decided to use a stochastic strategy [distributed random variables], called Monte Carlo, and unite it with protein-structure prediction techniques,” BSC research worker Victor Guallar tells ZDNet.

“So in just a couple of hours we could get the info it used to take days or weeks to get with other systems.”

Right now, the applications interface isn’t quite friendly, so Guallar and his team are working to enhance it. The next step is bringing virtual reality to the system, so an identical system can be remotely worked on by specialists all over the world, he says.

Guallar considers the system is among the first palpable molecular modeling measures of what will be personalized medication in the place.

“Treatment will be determined following genetic investigation of the factors behind the disorder in each patient [to identify] which drug would be most successful in each individual case,” he says.