SynPred, a novel Artificial Intelligence based tool to help unveil new drug combinations for cancer treatment has been published by GigaScience, of the Oxford Academic publishing group. By screening different cancer tissues, this tool helps uncover specific solutions that allow the usage of more adequate and less concentrated drugs for cancer treatment. This has a big impact in minimizing the secondary effects of current treatments and opens the doors for more effective therapeutics.
The scientific paper “SYNPRED: prediction of drug combination effects in cancer using different synergy metrics and ensemble learning”, by Preto et al. 2022, is the result of a three-year effort lead by Professor Irina Moreira from the Center of Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra. SynPred software is available at http://www.moreiralab.com/resources/synpred/, allowing it to stand out in a competitive research landscape. Furthermore, its focus on feature explainability and its multi-pronged approach for anticancer drug synergy metrics convey a robust scientific background that supports its key results not only on a performance level but also from a biological standpoint. The full article can be consulted here.