Digital filter aids data driven drug discovery

Drugs could move to clinical trials more quickly with a new digital filter from Purdue University that helps to create more exact measurements early in the development stage.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, it can take 10 to 15 years or longer to move a drug from discovery to market.

Pharmaceutical companies inform their financial and scientific decision making with the outcomes of chemical and biological analyses, and slight measurement variations can potentially add risk and uncertainty in these decisions.

Garth Simpson, a professor of analytical and physical chemistry in Purdue's College of Science, created the filter as part of his work with the Merck-Purdue Center for Measurement Science. The technology is published in Analytical Chemistry.

"Our latest development is this novel filter design for digital deconvolution that helps us remove timing artifacts arising from the response function of the instrument we are using for data acquisition," Simpson said.