Systems biology and pharmacology involves the application of systems biology approaches, integrating high throughput experimental data from different experimental techniques such as genomics and proteomics involving computational analytical approaches, to understand the mechanism of action of drugs, identify potential drug targets, use existing drugs for other disease indications and study adverse drug reactions. 

The significance of using integrated approach is that it allows drug action and drug response to be studied in the context of whole genome or proteome. Basically, a strong and simplified platform for the development of systems pharmacology is provided by information from genetic studies, disease pathophysiology, pharmacology, protein-protein and protein-drug interactions. 

Network analyses of interactions involved in disease pathophysiology and drug response will allow the integration of the systems-level understanding of drug action with genetic information enabling personalized medicine. Developments and insights from merging systems pharmacology and pharmacogenomics studies will provide new information on the complexities of disease associated with the identification of multiple targets for drug treatment and understanding adverse events caused by off-targets of drugs.

Reserach Focus

ØPredicting drug-target/drug/adverse drug reaction based on multi-scale systems biology model

ØThe study of multi-scale modeling approaches and key questions in systems pharmacology

ØThe study of the chemometrics algorithms solving pairwise data and its applications to the compound-protein interaction recognition

ØDatabase and computation plaform construction

The Milky Way II Supercomputer System

ØThe Milky Way II supercomputer system, developed by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), is the outstanding achievement of the National 863 Program.

ØWith 16,000 computer nodes, each comprising two Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon processors and three Xeon Phi coprocessor chips, it represents the world's largest installation of Ivy Bridge and Xeon Phi chips, counting a total of 3,120,000 cores. Each of the 16,000 nodes possess 88 gigabytes of memory (64 used by the Ivy Bridge processors, and 8 gigabytes for each of the Xeon Phi processors). The total CPU plus coprocessor memory is 1,375 TiB (approximately 1.34 PiB).

ØDuring the testing phase, the Milky Way II supercomputer system was laid out in a non-optimal confined space. When assembled at its final location, the system will have a theoretical peak performance of 54.9 petaflops. At peak power consumption, the system itself would draw 17.6 megawatts of power. Including external cooling, the system would draw an aggregate of 24 megawatts. The computer complex would occupy 720 square meters of space.

ØThe front-end system consists of 4096 Galaxy FT-1500 CPUs, a SPARC derivative designed and built by NUDT. Each FT-1500 has 16 cores and a 1.8 GHz clock frequency. The chip has a performance of 144 gigaflops and runs on 65 watts. The interconnect, called the TH Express-2, designed by NUDT, utilizes a fat tree topology with 13 switches each of 576 ports.