If you have any follow on questions, we're meeting with Jack again next week and would be happy to add any more information on this topic!
My take away is that this is what the so-called Systems Biology / in silico Biology ppl have been talking about for the past 10 years or so. Unfortunately the drug discovery industry has its own systematic problems as A) most major biopharma are run by MBA/lawyers/D. Pharm, (this is why M&A / tax inversion / outsourcing have higher priority than basic R&D); B) from A the basic R&D (left along Systems Biology) are on the chopping block for cost cutting; C) and it's hard for Bio Data Hacking companies to survive in the past 10 years or so. Most bioinformatic companies are either out of business or being absorbed. The Entelos the authors mentioned actually went through IPO, relisting, chapter 11 and recapitalization.
So my question would be how these road blocks could be overcome before in silico biology could contribute more to the drug discovery process for a better "compass"?
Funding this, however, would never come from industry. You'd need to convince NIH that spending many years rediscovering old drugs is the magic leap forward we need.
As someone ignorant of the field - has this been done? What is the state of validation in computer biology?
any way, the solution might not be so straight forward for in-silico biology as several major bottlenecks still hard to resolved, such as those failed clinical trials data are never revealed and shared, and the most cash-burning process still concentrate on clinical trial stages.