Reversing Eroom’s Law in Biochemistry
One must live somewhere high in the Himalayas to have missed the significant scientific developments throughout recent decades. Already in our generation’s lifetime, we have witnessed computer technologies penetrating every single aspect of our daily lives, often bringing solutions that would have been considered science fiction just 20 years ago.
Medicine and pharmacology have been among the greatest benefactors of these technological break-throughs, as seen with new and new drug generations entering the market — such as monoclonal antibodies, new generations of HIV medicines, anti-migraine pills — just to name a few. It is hard to overestimate the recent achievements due to technological progress, and they seem to continue happening at an exponential rate. This growth has long been expected and very much looked forward to, even carefully explained — thanks to computer science advancement. Indeed, Moore’s Law predicting a doubling of maximum transistor density every two years directly results in computational costs also declining twice over the same period. Surely, we are free to forecast stable growth multipliers in the coming years, and our future seems brighter and brighter every day.
In pharmacology they, however, started noticing a reverse trend as early as the 1980’s. This is brilliantly explained by Dr. Richard Friesner (Ph.D and co-founder of Schrödinger LLC, one of the leading pharmaceutical research companies) in his article “Reversing Eroom’s Law: Can Computers Dramatically Impact the Productivity of Drug Discovery?”. For those who may not have heard of Eroom’s law it is Moore’s Law reversed both in meaning and spelling. Eroom’s law empirically states that drug discovery costs double approximately every 9 years which should be concerning to just about everyone since we all will ultimately end up taking a maintenance drug as we age, if we are not taking one already. These development cost hikes slow down research and might be considered as a serious obstacle in the way of computational biochemistry towards that ‘multi-billion dollar molecule’ — a super-efficient targeted pill we need so much.
Dr Friesner is still very optimistic though, and it is incredibly comforting. He notes in his article, that current biochemical practices do not yet fully utilize the rapidly increasing computational potential of large data processing, even though the industry has already started benefitting from reduced costs of computer modeling. According to him, ‘the challenge is to predict, using computers and accurate scientific algorithms, the key properties a drug candidate must have’. Although attempts to use computer simulations of physical and chemical compound properties have been constantly made for the last 30 years, only now have their results started showing some fruition, and the potential is limitless!
Moreover, nowadays every media outlet is talking endlessly about targeted therapies in the form of shaping the active molecular components of a drug to an individual’s genetic profile, also known as personalized medicine. This is the point where we must take Eroom’s Law into consideration once again, as an in-built individual adjustment cost would be unimaginably exorbitant! One must then ask the question, why are scientists pursuing this, if they are well aware that only a few could actually afford this type of care?
The answer, according to Dr Friesner, again comes back to the development of computer simulation models. He forecasts an explosive growth of nano-technologies, which will reverse Eroom’s Law. The biology and chemistry behind every targeted pill we could potentially take will be light years above the existing level in terms of specificity and potency, and — hopefully, with very much reduced cost. He concludes his excellent article with an optimistic forecast of the eternal quality-price trade-off: “The counterweight of highly challenging biology and a higher safety/efficacy bar for new drugs will still be present; but reversing Eroom’s law using accurate, robust nanoscale simulations appears to be likely.”
That does give humankind a greater hope for combating diseases in the future!
