Name of the research center: CENTER FOR DRUG DATA ANALYSIS, CHEMINFORMATICS, AND THE INTERNET OF MEDICAL THINGS/ acronym CDDA-CIMT

Director of the research center: Professor Lucreția Udrescu, PhD

Date of establishment/ acknowledgement: 29.05.2024

Research areas/ research opportunities:

This research center aggregates around a team that tackled in silico drug research by processing big data using machine learning methods. Our team uses bioinformatics and chemoinformatics tools to:

  • identifying new pharmacological properties for approved drugs and generating candidates for repositioning 1, 2 3, 4 5
  • revealing patterns of drug interactions 6, 7
  • assessment of the ADMET 8 profile

Other notable results are the phenotyping of patients using complex networks 9, 10, 11, 12

Thus, our main research directions are:

  1. To analyze drug interactions (drug-drug, drug-target, drug-disease) to uncover candidates for repositioning, elucidate new mechanisms of action, optimize treatment schemes involving polypharmacy, and predict drug interactions in a specific clinical context,
  2. To validate candidates for repositioning using chemometric and in-vitro experiments,
  3. To analyze physiological signals of patients with certain pathologies (e.g., asthma, depression) with the Internet of Medical Things to prevent episodes of disease exacerbation, predict the optimal moment of drug administration by avoiding dosage errors, and improve the comfort of life via proper communication control with the physician and pharmacist using time series data analysis and dedicated mobile applications.
Members list:

Titular members:

Nr.

Name and surname of the titular member (didactic/ researchpersonnel)

Didactic/ research degree

1.

Lucreția Udrescu

Professor, PhD

2.

Angela Caunii

Assoc. Professor, PhD

3.

Camelia Oprean

Senior Lecturer, PhD

4.

Mirela Nicolov

Assoc. Professor, PhD

5.

Claudia Watz

Senior Lecturer, PhD

 

Associated members:

Nr.

Name and surname

Student, masters student, PhD student, postdoctoral student, auxilliary and non-teaching staff

1.

Goldiș Diana

PhD student

2.

Hânda Daiana

PhD student

3.

Tuică Medana

PhD student

4.

Vasii Sabina

PhD student

5.

Jurj Daniela

PhD student

 

Internal collaborators:

Nr.

Name and surname (didactic/ research personnel)

VBUMP Affiliation (Discipline and department)

1.

Ștefan Mihăicuță, Senior Lecturer, MD, PhD

Pulmonology, Dep. XIII Infectious diseases, Faculty of Medicine

2.

Liana Suciu, Senior Lecturer, PhD

Pharmacology-Pharmacotherapy, Dep. II Faculty of Pharmacy

3.

Aimée Chiș, Assistant Professor, PhD

Biochemistry, Dep. IV Biochemistry and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine

4.

Laura Sbârcea, Professor, PhD

Drug Analysis, Environmental Chemistry, Hygiene, Nutrition, Dep. I Faculty of Pharmacy

 

External collaborators:

Nr.

Name and surname (didactic/ research personnel)

Affiliation (Department, institution/ university, city, country)

1.

Prof. Mihai Udrescu, PhD

Department of Computers and Information Technology, Politehnica University of Timisoara

2.

Prof. Călin-Adrian Popa, PhD

Department of Computers and Information Technology, Politehnica University of Timisoara

3.

Prof. Paul Bogdan, PhD

Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

4.

Prof. Alexandru Topîrceanu, PhD

Department of Computers and Information Technology, Politehnica University of Timisoara

5.

Assoc. Prof. Alexandru Iovanovici, PhD

Department of Computers and Information Technology, Politehnica University of Timisoara

6.

Assoc. Prof. Renata-Maria Văruț, PhD

Dep. 1, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Craiova