# AI-Powered Quantitative Systems Pharmacology for AD Drug Repurposing

> **NIH NIH R01** · HUNTER COLLEGE · 2024 · $721,920

## Abstract

Abstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) poses a triple threat to public health, as its prevalence is on the rise, its costs are
immense, and there is no effective therapy. However, drug development attempts for the treatment of AD have
met with minimal success. The failure is largely attributable to a reductionist concept of "one drug, one gene,
one disease." As AD is a multigenic heterogeneous illness, a new therapeutic strategy is urgently required to
concurrently target the numerous pathogenic processes involved for the genesis and progression of AD in
each individual patient. Many translational bioinformatics strategies for AD drug repurposing have been
developed in recent years. Existing target-based, phenotype-based, network-based, and patient-based drug
repurposing strategies are unable to fully address the challenges of AD drug repurposing due to the lack of
thoroughly validated drug targets, potent lead compounds, and high-throughput phenotype readouts that can
characterize the molecular complexity of AD. Over the past decade, we have built an artificial intelligence-
based quantitative systems pharmacology (AI-QSP) platform that attempts to predict and characterize
genome-wide chemical-protein interactions and functional activities, as well as correlate molecular interactions
with phenotypic responses. Our AI-QSP platform integrates diverse omics data synergistically and incorporates
machine learning, biophysics, and systems biology methodologies. The AI-QSP platform has been effectively
applied to drug repurposing including AD, polypharmacology, side effect prediction, and precision medicine.
Established our proof-of-concept studies, we propose to develop and thoroughly evaluate a unique
computational methodology that combines target-based and mechanism-driven phenotypic chemical screening
for AD individualized drug repurposing. Using a novel domain adaptation strategy, we will expand our context-
independent phenotypic compound screening methodologies to AD patient-specific, cell type-specific,
transcriptome-based drug repurposing. In addition, we will analyze the ADME features of repurposed
pharmaceuticals in the human brain utilizing cutting-edge physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PBPK)
techniques. We will improve state-of-the-art drug-gene-disease network models for Alzheimer's disease drug
repurposing by incorporating understudied dark proteins that are abundant in the target list suggested by AD
omics studies and their inhibitory or activatory effects, and by applying graph mining techniques for drug-gene-
disease link predictions. Using cell-based disease models and RNA-seq studies, we will combine
complementary phenotype-based and target-based techniques to rank drug candidates and confirm their
efficacy and toxicity on AD treatment. In conclusion, the successful completion of this project could provide the
scientific community with a novel translational bioinformatics resource for identifying potential therapeutics for
effectiv...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10851929
- **Project number:** 5R01AG057555-07
- **Recipient organization:** HUNTER COLLEGE
- **Principal Investigator:** Lei Xie
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $721,920
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-30 → 2028-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10851929

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10851929, AI-Powered Quantitative Systems Pharmacology for AD Drug Repurposing (5R01AG057555-07). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10851929. Licensed CC0.

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