Data Science for Science

  Drug development for the treatment of various diseases is the cornerstone of medicine for human health. Drug development is an expensive and time-consuming process. Most drugs developed up to the human-trials stage end up having no effect at all or too many side-effects. These drugs are thus discarded resulting in wasted time, money and effort. The cost of these drugs end up on the price tags of drugs that do become successful. Before drug development can even take place the drug discovery process must occur. Briefly, drug discovery involves a process of finding promising drug-like molecules that can bind or "dock" properly onto certain protein targets. After successfully docking to the protein, the binding drug, also known as the ligand, can stop a protein from functioning. If this happens to an essential protein of a bacterium, it can kill the bacterium, conferring protection to the human body. Drug discovery, the process of discovering new candidate medications, involves