Artificial Intelligence has been employed in the design of "personalized medicine" drugs.

An Emirates University researcher uses electric fields to treat cancer patients

Dr. Alia Orabi uses computational chemistry to find solutions to chronic diseases.

From the source

The United Arab Emirates University revealed the success of the researcher in the Department of Biochemistry at the University's College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr. Alia Orabi, in the field of the impact of electric fields on treating cancer patients, and the use of computers and mathematical models to make discoveries in the fields of drug design, personalized medicine, and the development of intelligence To employ artificial therapy.

In detail, Dr. Alia Orabi uses computational chemistry in health-related research and projects, through which she explores the influence of external factors such as electrical fields and compounds resulting from pollution, on changes in DNA that lead to cancer, in addition to studying the effect of strong electric fields on the speed of interactions between pairs of bases. DNA.

The researcher found the possibility of the effect of electric fields up to 109 V / m, on cancer rates as high as four times.

Orabi told "Emirates Today" that the aim of this study is to reach, through the use of electric fields to treat cancer patients, developments in the treatment of "personalized medicine", noting that it is a rapidly growing field in which patients are treated on a personal level, according to genetics. In Personal Medicine, the principle of “one medicine fits all” is replaced with the principle of using different medicines for different patients, in order to improve the levels and effectiveness of treatment, and reduce the side effects of each patient.

She pointed out that this future direction in the applications of silico studies requires high-speed computing and specifications, including ex-Skill computers (computers that perform 1018 computing operations per second), which are universal devices of exceptional sizes, with a speed of performance that may reach 148.8 petaflops.

Orabi said: “I seek to use the latest technologies in computational chemistry to find solutions to chronic diseases, and given the rapid growth of computer science in recent years, it has become an indispensable tool that complements theory and experience in countless pioneering health-related research projects, such as personalized medicine. And artificial intelligence and others ».

She pointed out that she seeks, through her research in the field of drug design, to accelerate the discovery of compounds and improve the properties of drugs, as she uses computational chemistry and quantum theories to explain how to replace parts of drug compounds, without disturbing their biological activity, despite their structural, physical and chemical differences.

Orabi revealed her finding that the secret lies in the striking resemblance to the rate of electron density in those parts of pharmaceutical compounds, indicating that the future direction of this project is to use this feature as an advantage in artificial intelligence to predict new drug compounds, pointing out that «drug design with the help of Computer »leads to speeding up the process of discovery in all its stages, and this development is used to discover binding sites, to generate candidate compounds, and to improve drug properties from absorption to the pathway of drugs inside the body, such as side effects. Therefore, computer-aided drug design is an effective tool to save cost and time.

Nutritional Genetics

Dr. Alia Orabi explained that "nutritional genetics" is the study of the relationships between diet, genetics and health, and is currently being used, through computer studies, in "personal preventive" treatment, as each patient's diet is customized according to his genetics to prevent many diseases.

She pointed out that artificial intelligence is about training machines or robots to make independent decisions, through machine learning algorithms, which depend on computer studies, and it is used in the health sector, to facilitate tasks related to disease diagnosis, surgeries and even management, as robots are now used in Radiography analysis for the effective diagnosis of large numbers of cancer patients, "Covid-19", and other diseases.

Dr. Alia Orabi:

• "Computer-aided design of drugs leads to accelerating drug discovery in all its stages."

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