A drug screening platform designed by researchers at Memphis, Tenn.-based St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital can rapidly identify new and effective drug combinations for cancer and other diseases, according to a study published Dec. 15 in Nature Communications.
The platform, called Combocat, uses machine learning and specialized liquid handling technology to uncover drug combinations at scale, a Dec. 15 St. Jude news release said.
Researchers used the platform to test 9,045 pairs of drugs against a neuroblastoma cancer cell line to show the platform’s capabilities. The study found multiple drug pairs with “strong synergistic effects,” with the top results validated through further testing.
“The field of drug discovery has lacked a way to deal with the sheer number of potential combinations, which would require impractical amounts of experimental materials to screen,” Paul Geeleher, PhD, associate faculty member at St. Jude and senior co-corresponding study author, said in the release. “We designed Combocat to use minimal resources and enable scientists to test massive numbers of drug combinations.”
The open-source platform can be accessed here.
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