Cell simulation could make better drugs

An undergraduate researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland has devised a computer simulation model that could help drugs companies develop new treatments for diseases ranging from asthma to psoriasis. Jane Kim's research simulates the behaviour of a commonly-studied amoeba which behaves like a human white blood cell.

Kim, a biomedical engineering student, has been studying a soil-dwelling single-celled organism called Dictyostelium discoideum. When food is scarce, these amoeba can join together to form a multicellular organism, tracking down other amoeba of the same type by following chemical signals. This process, called chemotaxis, is similar to the process which white blood cells use to track down and destroy pathogens.

Kim developed the model using a software system called Virtual Cell. 'A cell can be seen as a microscopic machine,' she says. 'A biologist may see the cell as a living organism, but we engineers look at the mathematics behind the science. It makes for a really great collaboration.'

Chris Janetopoulos, a postdoctoral fellow supervising Kim's research, says that it is already proving useful. 'It is unlikely that the simulation can mirror what we see in the living cell precisely, but one of our goals is to watch the virtual cell respond to a chemical gradient. Then, on the computer, we can change the way the components are interacting and see what happens. This type of experimentation can help us direct our efforts towards finding certain proteins and analysing certain pathways more aggressively.'