Astellas Pharma said this week that it has signed an agreement with the Tokyo Institute of Technology that will allow it to use Tokyo Tech's TSUBAME2.0 petaflop-class supercomputer to discover candidates for treating neglected tropical diseases caused by dengue virus.
Astellas said that the partnership will involve two phases. In the first, the researches will mine public information such as patents and published articles to obtain useful knowledge about treatments for diseases caused by dengue virus. In the second phase, they will use in silico screening to identify compounds that are predicted to have anti-dengue virus capabilities.
According to Astellas, Tokyo Tech will be responsible for the data mining and in silico screening calculations of commercially available compounds while Astellas will be in charge of preparing input data for mining, selecting, and listing of hit compounds that will be evaluated.
This is the second research partnership between Astellas and Tokyo Tech. Last summer, they worked on discovering potential candidates for treating NTDs caused by protozoan parasites