Nervous about narrowing product pipelines and costly clinical trial failures, big pharmaceutical companies are seeking new tools to revitalize their business. Amid the uncertainty, Rutgers University biologist Joseph Martin is making a rather grandiose-sounding proposition: He might be able to help.
It's not a totally idle claim, though. He's involved in a project backed by $50 million from the state of New Jersey, focused on producing a cutting-edge breed of scientists who are expert in computational and systems biology. "We hope we can find some real theories of biological systems, some very basic-science kinds of ideas," then "translate them to the bedside," Martin says. Companies have shown growing interest in such research, which could alleviate their woes in several ways. It promises to harness computers to predict drug effects ...
