Modelling How Drugs Work

Most drugs work by binding to specific receptors on the surface of cells, which alters the activity of the cell to produce beneficial therapeutic effects. These drug-induced effects can be readily described by relatively simple mathematical relationships. Undergraduate students completing a Major in Pharmacology need to have an advanced level of understanding of the importance of the properties of both the drug and cell in determining drug-induced effects. In 2018, CITS3200 students successfully developed an interactive application called SPIKESfunc (https://spikesfunc.github.io/index.html). The effective development and roll-out of SPIKESfunc has enabled several consecutive cohorts of Level 3 pharmacology students at UWA (2019-2021) to:
  1. visualise how changes in the properties of the drug (such as concentration, affinity and efficacy) and the cell (numbers of receptors, etc.), affects drug-induced effects in cells
  2. to develop competencies in the visual interpretation of drug-induced effects, through the use of a Quiz tool (included in the application).
Based on positive and constructive student feedback, and recent developments in the field (Buchwald, 2019, 2020), the aim of the 2021 project is to substantively refine and enhance the capabilities of SPIKESfunc, including:

Client

Contact: A/Prof Peter Henry
Phone: 6457 3123
Email: [email protected]
Preferred contact: Email
Location: School of Biomedical Sciences, QEII Medical Centre

IP Exploitation Model

The IP exploitation model requested by the Client is: Creative Commons (open source) http://creativecommons.org.au/


Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering
The University of Western Australia
Last modified: 18 June 2021
Modified By: Michael Wise 		UWA