BC Cancer, part of the Provincial Health Services Authority

Published purpose

Designing a drug for a specific disease type is highly challenging due to tremendous molecular search space and limited understanding about the disease of interest. Successful discovery of a medicine for a target (gene/protein/pathway) usually last for many years and costs a private pharmaceutical organization billions of dollars, which in turn determines the unaffordable price of medicines in the Canadian and global markets. The emerging of massive biochemical and high-throughput genomic data acquisition techniques and the rise of advanced artificial intelligence paradigms provide an unprecedented opportunity for automatic design of new drugs with much faster pace and much lower cost, igniting hopes to discovery drugs for diseases where no medicines have been found yet. In this project, the aim is to develop a data- and AI-driven drug design platform/pipeline for precise and effective treatment of cancers and complex diseases. It is possible to take the advantages of NRC’s unique multidisciplinary expertise in AI, data science, and human health therapeutics, as well as recipient’s knowledge and facilities, to tackle challenges in every step of drug design. Project technologies and outcomes will be disruptive and beneficial to all Canadians. This project will focus on search for small molecules carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX) novel inhibitors. The recipient will provide expertise in CAIX binding and enzymatic assays, wet lab validation and experimental analysis of designed drug candidates for inhibiting CAIX activity and impact to tumor growth in vitro and in vivo.