That’s what researchers at the University of California, San Diego, are doing. They believe they found a method that, although not foolproof, may be an easy way to identify some of the side effects currently missed during the clinical trial process, The New Scientist reports (subscription required).

Philip Bourne and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, used a process similar to what drugmakers now do when running simulations to test compounds. As a proof of concept, they studied selective oestrogen receptor modulators, a class of drug that includes Tamoxifen. To look for possible side effects of such drugs, the mag writes, they searched around 800 human proteins for sites that the drug might bind to and scored one direct hit - a protein that helps control the movement of calcium in and out of cells.

The result suggests the approach may work, since heart problems caused by Tamoxifen can be explained by a disruption in calcium levels, The New Scientist notes. “There is a lot of potential for this process,” Bourne tells the mag, which also notes that Novartis, for instance, uses a simliar approach. In fact, Laszlo Urban, head of safety profiling at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Cambridge, declined to reveal the candidate drug involved, but says that the approach identified a possible side effect that was severe enough for development to be scrapped.