U.S. researchers have developed a model to help predict a drug's tendency to cause fetal malformations when taken by a pregnant woman.
Researchers in the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program developed a preclinical model for predicting a drug's teratogenicity -- its ability to create birth defects -- based on characterizing the genes that it targets.
Dr. Asher Schachter and Dr. Isaac Kohane crunched databases to identify genes involved in biological processes related to fetal development, by looking for terms such as "genesis," "develop," "differentiate" or "growth." Based on the developmental gene profile, the researchers created a model that showed 79 percent accuracy in predicting whether a drug would be in Class A -- safest -- or Class X -- known teratogen.
For example, the cholesterol-lowering drugs cerivastatin, lovastatin, pravastatin and fluvastatin are all in Class X and all of these drugs targeted very high proportions of high-risk genes -- 98 percent to 100 percent.
Schachter and Kohane applied the model to drugs across all risk classes and the proportion of developmental genes targeted roughly matched the degree of known risk.
"A lot of drugs in the middle of the spectrum may cause subtle defects that we haven't detected," Schachter says in a statement. "We can't provide a yes/no answer, but we found a pattern that can predict which are riskier."
The model allows doctors to tell patients, "This drug targets a ton of genes that are involved in developmental processes," Schachter says.