(Georgia Tech: Atlanta) -- Creating new, improved pharmaceuticals can be like cracking the code of a combination lock: If you have the wrong numbers, the lock won’t open. Even worse, you don’t know if your numbers are close to the actual code or way off the mark. The only solution is to simply guess at a new combination and try again.

Similarly, when a newly created drug doesn’t bind well to its intended target, the drug won’t work. Scientists are then forced to go back to the lab, often with little indication about why the binding was weak. The next step is to choose a different pharmaceutical “combination” and hope for better results. Georgia Tech researchers have now generated a computer model that could help change that blind process.

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