Suchergebnisse

The history of methadone treatment in Australia has been and continues to be marked by conflict between two competing aims: harm minimisation and abstinence. The two approaches tend to be associated with high dose-long term and low dose-short term treatment, respectively. Most programmes fail to provide adequate ancillary services, often to the detriment of patient outcome. Despite chronic under-funding, a relative lack of staff training and, in some states, the absence of a system of clinical accountability, Australian methadone services have grown significantly in the last decade. Factors influencing the growth of programmes have been described using the New South Wales programme as the example as it represents the largest and most complex programme in the country. Current problems and the impact of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus on policy development are highlighted.

Computational approaches in drug discovery and development hold great promise, with artificial intelligence methods undergoing widespread contemporary use, but the experimental validation of these new approaches is frequently inadequate. We are initiating Critical Assessment of Computational Hit-finding Experiments (CACHE) as a public benchmarking project that aims to accelerate the development of small molecule hit-finding algorithms by competitive assessment. Compounds will be identified by participants using a wide range of computational methods for dozens of protein targets selected for different types of prediction scenarios, as well as for their potential biological or pharmaceutical relevance. Community-generated predictions will be tested centrally and rigorously in an experimental hub(s), and all data, including the chemical structures of experimentally tested compounds, will be made publicly available without restrictions. The ability of a range of computational approaches to find novel compounds will be evaluated, compared, and published. The overarching goal of CACHE is to accelerate the development of computational chemistry methods by providing rapid and unbiased feedback to those developing methods, with an ancillary and valuable benefit of identifying new compound-protein binding pairs for biologically interesting targets. The initiative builds on the power of crowd sourcing and expands the open science paradigm for drug discovery. ; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Structural Genomics Consortium is a registered charity (no: 1097737) that receives funds from Bayer AG, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Genome Canada through Ontario Genomics Institute [OGI-196], Janssen, Merck KGaA (aka EMD in Canada and US), Pfizer, Takeda and the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 875510. The JU receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Royal Institution for ...