Recently, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the "Decision of the Ministry of Education on the Award of Scientific Research Outstanding Achievements (Science and Technology) in Higher Education Institutions in 2020" (Education, Science, and Information Department [2021] No. 1). Professor Kang Ling of the Software School of our university participated in the completion of the "Prediction and Discovery Methods of Potential Drug Targets" won the first prize.

The project was co-led by Professor Li Honglin of East China University of Science and Technology and Academician Jiang Hualiang of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Liu Xiaofeng from Anjisheng Biomedical Technology Co., LTD., Dr. Gao Zhenting from Shanghai Yituo Pharmaceutical Technology Co., LTD., Dr. Gong Jiayu from Shanghai Computer Software Technology Development Center, Professor Kang Ling from Dalian Neusoft University of Information, Dr. Wang Xia from Magee Translational Medicine Research Co., LTD., and other scholars participated in the project.

The project research lasted for more than ten years, with the creation of a new method as the main line, based on the protein, binding site pharmacophore and small molecule three-dimensional structure, the construction of potential drug targets and pharmacophore databases, and systematic research on drug target prediction and discovery methods. The project has overcome a series of key technical problems and achieved innovative results, constructing the drug target bioinformatics database PDTD; developing the reverse molecular docking method TarFisDock, which uses active small molecules as probes to search for potential binding proteins; proposing the countermeasure for the first time matching method to pharmacophore PharmMapper, and proposing target prediction method ChemMapper for the first time. Many international scientific research institutions, such as TIBLE, a database of tubercle bacilli from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, use the new method developed by the project as a benchmark for the performance evaluation of other methods. Many research groups at home and abroad have successfully carried out drug target discovery and experimental confirmation using the new method of the project. During the entire project development process, Professor Kang Ling was mainly responsible for the construction of the PDTD database of drug target bioinformatics and the improvement of the drug target conformation search algorithm.

The Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scientific Research of Higher Education (S&T) is established by the Ministry of Education to encourage teachers, scientists and research organizations of higher education who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of science and technology.