Drugst.One - a plug-and-play solution for online systems medicine and network-based drug repurposing.

In recent decades, the development of new drugs has become increasingly expensive and inefficient, and the molecular mechanisms of most pharmaceuticals remain poorly understood. In response, computational systems and network medicine tools have emerged to identify potential drug repurposing candidates. However, these tools often require complex installation and lack intuitive visual network mining capabilities. To tackle these challenges, we introduce Drugst.One, a platform that assists specialized computational medicine tools in becoming user-friendly, web-based utilities for drug repurposing. With just three lines of code, Drugst.One turns any systems biology software into an interactive web tool for modeling and analyzing complex protein-drug-disease networks. Demonstrating its broad adaptability, Drugst.One has been successfully integrated with 21 computational systems medicine tools. Available at https://drugst.one, Drugst.One has significant potential for streamlining the drug discovery process, allowing researchers to focus on essential aspects of pharmaceutical treatment research.

Network medicine-based epistasis detection in complex diseases: ready for quantum computing.

Most heritable diseases are polygenic. To comprehend the underlying genetic architecture, it is crucial to discover the clinically relevant epistatic interactions (EIs) between genomic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (1-3). Existing statistical computational methods for EI detection are mostly limited to pairs of SNPs due to the combinatorial explosion of higher-order EIs. With NeEDL (network-based epistasis detection via local search), we leverage network medicine to inform the selection of EIs that are an order of magnitude more statistically significant compared to existing tools and consist, on average, of five SNPs. We further show that this computationally demanding task can be substantially accelerated once quantum computing hardware becomes available. We apply NeEDL to eight different diseases and discover genes (affected by EIs of SNPs) that are partly known to affect the disease, additionally, these results are reproducible across independent cohorts. EIs for these eight diseases can be interactively explored in the Epistasis Disease Atlas (https://epistasis-disease-atlas.com). In summary, NeEDL demonstrates the potential of seamlessly integrated quantum computing techniques to accelerate biomedical research. Our network medicine approach detects higher-order EIs with unprecedented statistical and biological evidence, yielding unique insights into polygenic diseases and providing a basis for the development of improved risk scores and combination therapies.

UVC Irradiation as a Surface Treatment of Polycarbonate to Generate Adhesion to Liquid Silicone Rubber in an Overmolding Process.

This study investigates the adhesion properties of polycarbonate (PC) and liquid silicone rubbers (LSR) through surface activation using ultraviolet C (UVC) radiation. While self-adhesive LSRs adhere easily to certain thermoplastic composites such as polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polyamides (PAs), bonding to PC typically requires surface treatment due to the lack of compatible functional groups. Previous methods like plasma or flame treatment have been effective, but the use of UVC radiation for surface activation remains unexplored. Through experiments, it was found that UVC surface activation, particularly with ozone-generating lamps, significantly enhances the peel strength between PC and self-adhesive LSRs. The study evaluates the impact of different irradiation times and lamp configurations on peel resistance, surface energy, and composite stability. Results show that UVC/ozone (wavelengths 254 nm and 185 nm) activation increases peel resistance, with distinct differences observed between LSR types. Additionally, the study examines the stability of UVC activation over time and under various storage conditions, highlighting its effectiveness for up to 36 months at room temperature. Furthermore, the relationship between surface energy and peel strength is analyzed, finding that UVC/ozone activation increases surface energy but does not consistently correlate with improved adhesion. The study concludes with a comparison of UVC/ozone activation to alternative surface treatment methods, emphasizing its advantages such as cost-effectiveness and stability while considering limitations regarding substrate compatibility and occupational safety aspects. Overall, UVC/ozone surface activation presents a promising approach for enhancing adhesion in PC-LSR composite systems and holds potential for applications across various industries.