Researchers are already hard at work trying to find fast scientific solutions to the national opioid public health crisis, which the Department of Health and Human Services says was responsible for two out of three drug overdose deaths in 2018. 

Two School of Biological Sciences researchers have joined the effort to find answers to the crisis. Jeffrey Skolnick, Regents’ Professor, Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair, and GRA Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology; and Hongyi Zhou, a research scientist, are on a team that captured top honors in a recent National Institutes of Health-sponsored competition to find novel, outside-the-box approaches to the opioid problem. 

Their plan, “Development of a Comprehensive Integrated Platform for Translational Innovation in Pain, Opioid Abuse Disorder and Overdose” — which will use artificial intelligence, data and molecular analysis, cloud computing, and predictive algorithms in the search for new drugs — was one of five winning applications in a November 2020 competition. The results were announced April 26.

Skolnick and Zhou have now won two stages of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) ASPIRE Challenge, part of the NIH’s HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-Term) program. (ASPIRE stands for A Specialized Platform for Innovative Research Exploration.) 

Skolnick’s group includes Andre Ghetti with ANABIOS Corporation, and Nicole June with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. Skolnick, Zhou, and Ghetti will share a $120,000 prize. (Non U.S.-based team members are ineligible for financial prizes, according to ASPIRE rules.)

“We’re extremely grateful,” Skolnick says. “We’re very excited about this. The problem of opioid addiction and chronic pain is a real plague in America and for most of the world, and there aren’t a lot of real good answers, so this is motivating us to get people to think of novel solutions. We really appreciate the chance to put this team together.”

Rapidly translating scientific advances into immediate help for patients

NCATS defines translational science as “the process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic, and community, into interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public — from diagnostics and therapeutics, to medical procedures and behavioral changes.” 

The 2018 NCATS ASPIRE Challenge involved design competition in four component areas: integrated chemistry database, electronic synthetic chemistry portal; predictive algorithms, and biological assays (strength/potency tests.) Skolnick and Zhou were part of a winning team in that stage.

Skolnick calls his group’s predictive algorithms “our unfair competitive advantage:” data programs that can predict in advance the probability of a drug’s success. “In principle you could screen every molecule under the sun if you had infinite resources. You could test everything, but that’s very expensive and time-consuming. We can go through this list and prioritize them and say, this one has an 80 percent probability it will work.”

Skolnick’s group added Ghetti and June for the 2020 ASPIRE Reduction-to-Practice Challenge. “The goal of this Challenge is to combine the best solutions and develop a working platform that integrates the four component areas. The Reduction-to-Practice Challenge consists of three stages: planning; prototype development and milestone delivery; and prototype delivery, independent validation, and testing,” says the NCATS website.

Skolnick says his team’s application is designed to be accessed digitally as part of a cloud service. It will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to investigate molecules that could be turned into new drugs, as well as explore undiscovered uses for existing drugs. 

“Andre’s company is going to do the testing of the molecules, and Nicole Jung will organize all the data and store it so we can have a platform that is used not just by us, but by the (scientific) community,” Skolnick says. “We’re looking for novel mechanisms for drugs that relieve pain and treat addiction. The goal is to do this at high throughput, rather than one at a time. This is really designed to test the ideas at scale. You can get it to people a lot quicker.”

Skolnick hopes to have a robust working platform built within a year. Given the extent of the opioid crisis in the U.S. alone, the faster new non-addictive pain management drugs can be found and tested, the better, he adds.

“The need is critical. It’s one of these horrible societal problems that really require novel solutions, which means you want to understand all the mechanisms of pain, but do we understand the gears you want to turn to alleviate it?”

Researchers are already hard at work trying to find fast scientific solutions to the national opioid public health crisis, which the Department of Health and Human Services says was responsible for two out of three drug overdose deaths in 2018. 

Two School of Biological Sciences researchers have joined the effort to find answers to the crisis. Jeffrey Skolnick, Regents’ Professor, Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair, and GRA Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology; and Hongyi Zhou, a research scientist, are on a team that captured top honors in a recent National Institutes of Health-sponsored competition to find novel, outside-the-box approaches to the opioid problem. 

Their plan, “Development of a Comprehensive Integrated Platform for Translational Innovation in Pain, Opioid Abuse Disorder and Overdose” — which will use artificial intelligence, data and molecular analysis, cloud computing, and predictive algorithms in the search for new drugs — was one of five winning applications in a November 2020 competition. The results were announced April 26.

Skolnick and Zhou have now won two stages of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) ASPIRE Challenge, part of the NIH’s HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-Term) program. (ASPIRE stands for A Specialized Platform for Innovative Research Exploration.) 

Skolnick’s group includes Andre Ghetti with ANABIOS Corporation, and Nicole June with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. Skolnick, Zhou, and Ghetti will share a $120,000 prize. (Non U.S.-based team members are ineligible for financial prizes, according to ASPIRE rules.)

“We’re extremely grateful,” Skolnick says. “We’re very excited about this. The problem of opioid addiction and chronic pain is a real plague in America and for most of the world, and there aren’t a lot of real good answers, so this is motivating us to get people to think of novel solutions. We really appreciate the chance to put this team together.”

Rapidly translating scientific advances into immediate help for patients

NCATS defines translational science as “the process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic, and community, into interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public — from diagnostics and therapeutics, to medical procedures and behavioral changes.” 

The 2018 NCATS ASPIRE Challenge involved design competition in four component areas: integrated chemistry database, electronic synthetic chemistry portal; predictive algorithms, and biological assays (strength/potency tests.) Skolnick and Zhou were part of a winning team in that stage.

Skolnick calls his group’s predictive algorithms “our unfair competitive advantage:” data programs that can predict in advance the probability of a drug’s success. “In principle you could screen every molecule under the sun if you had infinite resources. You could test everything, but that’s very expensive and time-consuming. We can go through this list and prioritize them and say, this one has an 80 percent probability it will work.”

Skolnick’s group added Ghetti and June for the 2020 ASPIRE Reduction-to-Practice Challenge. “The goal of this Challenge is to combine the best solutions and develop a working platform that integrates the four component areas. The Reduction-to-Practice Challenge consists of three stages: planning; prototype development and milestone delivery; and prototype delivery, independent validation, and testing,” says the NCATS website.

Skolnick says his team’s application is designed to be accessed digitally as part of a cloud service. It will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to investigate molecules that could be turned into new drugs, as well as explore undiscovered uses for existing drugs. 

“Andre’s company is going to do the testing of the molecules, and Nicole Jung will organize all the data and store it so we can have a platform that is used not just by us, but by the (scientific) community,” Skolnick says. “We’re looking for novel mechanisms for drugs that relieve pain and treat addiction. The goal is to do this at high throughput, rather than one at a time. This is really designed to test the ideas at scale. You can get it to people a lot quicker.”

Skolnick hopes to have a robust working platform built within a year. Given the extent of the opioid crisis in the U.S. alone, the faster new non-addictive pain management drugs can be found and tested, the better, he adds.

“The need is critical. It’s one of these horrible societal problems that really require novel solutions, which means you want to understand all the mechanisms of pain, but do we understand the gears you want to turn to alleviate it?”

As the academic year comes to an end, the Student Government Association (SGA) is welcoming its new leadership. Samuel Ellis and Ajanta Choudhury were recently sworn in as the undergraduate SGA president and executive vice president, respectively. And Stephen Eick and PJ Jarquin will be taking over as graduate SGA president and executive vice president.

Eick, a Ph.D. student in computer science, comes from GSGA’s legislative branch, the Graduate Student Senate (GSS). Jarquin, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering, has spent his time in GSGA on the executive side, serving as vice president of campus services this year. He and Eick believe that, together, their experiences in different parts of student government will allow them to approach problems in a balanced way.

Ellis and Choudhury met in the Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR) during the 2019-20 school year. After that, Ellis, an international affairs major, became vice president of external affairs, while Choudhury, a biology major, took a year away from SGA. They hope that being able to see SGA from different perspectives will help them provide solutions and address issues.

As their terms get underway, both teams are ready to jump into advocating for students. For the undergraduate executives, this largely focuses on academic policies, changing how students interact with the Office of Student Integrity, and helping with the shift to in-house dining in the fall. The graduate executives, meanwhile, are starting off by trying to help increase and consolidate mental health resources across campus, as well as advocate for new ways to support graduate researchers. Both groups agree that as Tech transitions toward a more familiar semester in the fall, they want to be involved in making sure that transparent, robust policies are in place to keep students safe.

Both sets of executives also share the desire to strengthen their particular side of SGA, which they feel will allow them to better advocate for students’ needs. For example, Eick has a goal of filling every seat in GSS by the end of the year.

“We hold ourselves back when we don’t have people engaged,” he said. As a member of GSS, Eick was the only representative for the College of Computing, which usually can have as many as nine representatives. He sees this as an excellent opportunity to increase both participation and diversity within GSGA.

“We want to make sure that we’re reaching different parts of campus whose voices aren’t usually heard,” Ellis said. For him, this means bringing new people into USGA by creating a recruitment chair position, as well as connecting people outside of the organization with Institute-wide committees where their input would be useful.

Each new executive also has a policy that they’re particularly excited to work on. For Ellis, it’s finding a way to address the problem of students experiencing homelessness; Choudhury wants to improve infrastructure for students with disabilities. Eick is passionate about building a participant recruiting board for research studies across campus to strengthen graduate student research, while Jarquin plans on advocating for more LGBTQ+-friendly health resources.

The new SGA leadership is ultimately humbled by the opportunity to serve their fellow students.

“To be in this role is to empower and uplift those in the same way that I felt empowered and uplifted by former executives in student government,” said Choudhury. “Being in this role isn’t just about improving the student experience, but really empowering the next generation of student leaders.”

“Coming from an immigrant father, being raised in the South, and being gay, it’s important for me to be in a role as visible as this,” Jarquin said. “It really is an honor to be in the position to fight for all graduate students.”

Applications are currently open to be an executive committee chair for undergraduate SGA; applications are rolling, but those interested should apply by Friday, May 7, to be considered. Learn more about each committee here. Elections for GSS and first-year representatives for UHR will happen in the fall; view the full list of seats in GSS and UHR.