Finding new diseases for known cures Toronto Star

The cure for an emerging outbreak may already be in your medicine cabinet. And with an artificial intelligence computer program he's creating, a Canadian researcher is honing in on that link. "By the time (an outbreak) occurs it's already too late to create a new drug from the ground up," says University of British Columbia chemist Artem Cherkasov. "The idea is when a new infection comes in or gets noticed, to use some of the existing substances and try them against the virus or pathogen." Cherkasov presented his program, now in the later stages of development, at an American Chemical Society meeting on Sunday in Boston.