Reinventing Therapeutic Proteins: Mining a Treasure of New Therapies

Abstract

Reinventing approved therapeutic proteins for a new dose, a new formulation, a new route of administration, an improved safety profile, a new indication, or a new conjugate with a drug or a radioactive source is a creative approach to benefit from the billions spent on developing new therapeutic proteins. These new opportunities were created only recently with the arrival of AI/ML tools and high throughput screening technologies. Furthermore, the complex nature of proteins offers mining opportunities that are not possible with chemical drugs; bringing in newer therapies without spending billions makes this path highly lucrative financially while serving the dire needs of humanity. This paper analyzes several practical reinventing approaches and suggests regulatory strategies to reduce development costs significantly. This should enable the entry of hundreds of new therapies at affordable costs.

Computer-Aided Drug Design and Drug Discovery: A Prospective Analysis

“…It enables researchers to visualize and analyze the interactions between drug candidates and their target proteins, aiding in the design and optimization of potential drugs. Recently developed AI/ML-driven tools like AlphaFold2 [ 15 ], trTosetta [ 16 , 17 ], Robetta [ 18 ], RoseTTA Fold [ 19 ], ESMFold [ 20 ], and OmegaFold [ 21 ] have accelerated protein structure prediction by many folds [ 22 ]. Methods like molecular dynamics (MD) simulations can forecast the time-dependent behavior of molecules, capturing their motions and interactions over time through various tools like Gromacs [ 23 ], ACEMD [ 24 ], and OpenMM [ 25 , 26 ] ( Table 1 ).…”