The Bourbon Friday Show

The Bourbon Friday Show with Dr. Chris Ho from Drug Design Methodologies

On this episode of the Bourbon Friday Show, we had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Chris Ho, Owner and CSO of Drug Design Methodologies.

On this episode of the Bourbon Friday Show, we had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Chris Ho, Owner and CSO of Drug Design Methodologies.

Bourbon Friday – Chris Ho // Drug Design Methodologies

Today, the Bourbon Friday Show features Dr. Chris Ho, Owner of Drug Design Methodologies. His company develops software to chemically optimize and accurately measure drug-target binding, which ultimately helps accelerate and de-risk drug development in both pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Watch to learn more about this innovative startup! Tune in to the Bourbon Friday Show every week at 4:30pm to hear about a unique startup or business resource in the STL community.Also, thank you Christian Johnson and MultiPass for sponsoring this week's episode! Go to www.multipassapp.com to apply for their new startup program in August!

Posted by EQ – Entrepreneur Quarterly STL on Friday, July 19, 2019

Drug Design Methodologies—Using Technology to Improve Medicine

When people think of new medicines hitting the market, most think of the cheesy commercials with strange taglines and a laundry list of side effects that air between segments of your favorite show, or the clinical trials that people participate in to make a bit of money.

And even though we can guess that there’s a lot more to it than clinical trials and commercials—the average person knows very little about what it takes to bring a safe and effective drug to market.

According to Ho, finding the right chemical combination for a drug to be effective can take over a decade of research and anywhere from 3 to 5 billion dollars in funding.

Which is where Drug Design Methodologies comes in.

“We write software for pharmaceutical companies in the preclinical space,” says Ho. “In other words, we work hand-in-hand with medicinal chemists to help them improve weak binding compounds to make it ready for clinical trials.”

In essence, Drug Design Methodologies uses GPUs (graphical processor units) with their extremely fast processing speeds to create algorithms that help scientists narrow down what chemical combinations might work the best.

While being driven by the video game industry, these technologies are used today in everything from Cryptocurrency to Machine Learning.

Ultimately, due to the interest in and research of this technology from many communities, scientists and chemists have been able to drastically reduce the time and cost it takes to bring effective treatments to market.

If you are interested in learning more about Drug Design Methodologies and their work, you can go to http://newdrugdesign.com.

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Bourbon Innovation

As always, the Bourbon Friday team does their best to choose a fitting drink for the occasion.

The drink of choice was Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee Whiskey. This mainstay in the bourbon world was chosen for a couple of reasons. First off, Jack Daniel’s is made by Brown-Forman, a company started by George Garvin Brown who was in pharmaceutical sales. Additionally, like our guest, Brown-Forman has dabbled in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. Recently, it released an AR app for any Jack Daniel’s bottle that explains the history behind the bottle and its creators.

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