Matthias Samwald wrote:
Speaking of national boundaries, I wonder if alternative medicine
(e.g., herbal
medicine) would also be of interest to this community. For example,
Huperzine
is a drug derived from the herb Huperzia serrata. I also wonder if
there are
hypotheses regarding the study of herbs in the possible treatment of
neurological diseases.
I would also be very motivated to help in this kind of research.
Specifically, Huperzine A would be a very interesting use-case for our
developments. It is a herbal compound with a history in folk medicine
and is available OTC in most countries, yet it rivals the
effectiveness of currently leading Alzheimer medications such as
Tacrine. It also has a dual mode of action that does not only involve
acetylcholinesterase inhibition, but also modulation of the NMDA
receptor. The implications of this for the treatment of Alzheimer's
are still a rather hot topic.
That's great! Motivation is a good driving force. I agree such a herbal
compound like Huperzine A can help translate herbal medicine into
mainstream medicine.
The integration of knowledge from traditional medicine, plant
taxonomy/phylogeny/biochemistry and receptor binding databases (PDSP
Ki database, IUPHAR) could lead to the identification of some
extremely novel therapeutic strategies. Finding candidate molecules in
such a way might be much more effective than weeding through libraries
of compounds generated by combinatorial synthesis etc. The challenge
lies in the integration of some very heterogenous datasets that come
from vastly different disciplines, which is exactly the field of
research where Semantic Web technologies are most effective.
I'm also working with the SenseLab team to add Huperzine related data to
BrainPharm. Speaking of traditional medicine, I copied to Huajun Chen
who is heavily involved in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) database
development. Plus he is a semantic web person. Perhaps, he can also help
us in exploring/establishing this "east meets west" approach.
I guess the major problem for this kind of research is that there are
no funding programmes that span China, the US and Asia...
Sustainability is an important issue. If this community project takes
off, we should seek international funding opportunities ....
Cheers,
Matthias Samwald
DERI Galway, Ireland // Semantic Web Company, Austria
http://www.deri.ie/
http://www.semantic-web.at/
