Development of a database system for drug discovery by employing grid technology

Now that the human genome project has been completed and the human genes have been identified, genome-based drug discovery is starting to play a major role. It involves the process of target and lead identifications; identifying proteins (or drug targets) causing the disease, and identifying the lead compounds that would counteract them. We have developed a system for accelerating drug discovery, especially focusing on the lead identification. The system is based on Globus Toolkit3/OGSA-DAI and is accessible through the OGSA grid data service. In this system, we have designed meta-databases for integrating information on disease, proteins (drug targets) and ligands (lead compounds). Using this system, one could easily screen a large library of compounds for ligands of a given protein, just by specifying the protein sequence. The effectiveness of our system is demonstrated by measuring the performance of the lead identification of several target proteins, such as nuclear receptors.