Traditional medicine and artificial intelligence

A computer software that does as a virtual human body could help predict how individuals willreact to new therapeutic drugs. It will enable more chemicals to be examined with fewer humantrials, making drug developing faster, cheaper, and safer.Researchers at the Bio- Synergy Research Centers, recently have programmed CODA (Context-Oriented Directed Associations), software that working on recent advances in artificial intelligenceand biotechnology. They makes programs to use CODA to explore the therapeutic potentialof chemical compounds found in traditional medicines, such as Samul-Tang — a combinationof extracts from four Asian plants used to treat anemia.It is believed that CODA could accelerate personalized drug management — tailored medicinesbased on a patient’s genetic and physiological characteristics — by reducing the number of superfluoustrials. Also, “CODA’s prediction power can save time and money by providing importantbiological information that will enable conducting experiments efficiently. Previous strategies indrug development have focused on producing chemicals designed to react only with the proteinsinvolved in a disease, reducing the risk of side effects. But these drugs can still react with unintendedtargets. But “some serious diseases, such as cancers, can cause many complex interactions,so a multi-target approach that regulates them entirely can be effective”. It is impossible to testevery possible combination of drug on a broad range of patients.CODA aims to find a solution. To build CODA, the researchers first developed a computer languageto represent biological interactions. TheyThen gathered information from public databases and the scientific literature to construct a networkof potential interactions between chemicals, proteins and genes within, and between, organs.“Identifying unexpected drug interactions is an essential step in drug development,” It hasrecently developed a method to test the effects and interactions of drug pairs, rather than singledrugs, using CODA. “The CODA system can be used to predict and analyze the efficacy, toxicityand mechanism of action of multiple components,” So as conclusion, when tested using drugswith verified effects, CODA successfully identified both therapeutic and adverse effects.It hopes to make CODA into an online service that will “enable users to easily perform variousdrug analyses, and predict the effects of single and complex drugs”. The research center willcontinue to investigate the molecular activity of natural compounds extracted from traditionalmedicines. “With CODA, we can discover new healthcare materials, including botanical drugs,and functional foods”.