Modeling disease processes for drug development
Pamela K. Fink, L. Tandy Herren · 1996
Drug development is a complex and extremely risky process. It involves developing knowledge of the relevant biology at a variety of levels of detail in order to piece together a coherent model of the disease process and the potential point(s) of intervention. Ultimately, this model must be complete enough to support the prediction of effects and the explanation of clinical trial results. Unfortunately, such models of a disease process have been primarily developed and maintained in human minds. Consequently, such models are limited by a human's ability to store all of the needed information, structure it properly, and reason about its consequences involving both complex feedback and time dependencies. The following paper describes a knowledge-centered approach to the development of biological models that support the drug development process. This technique focuses on a multi-level, hierarchical approach that models various levels of the related biology using appropriate representation techniques based on both the type and availability of the knowledge.