Two grants from the new technology hub for Material and Molecular Design (MMD) have been awarded to CompChem members! Congratulations, Ioana and Bernd!
These are the awarded projects:
Digital development of drug nanocarriers for Alzheimer’s disease
Dr Ioana Ilie (HIMS), in cooperation with Prof Joost Reek (HIMS) and Dr Carlos Fitzsimons (Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences)
The development of medicine for Alzheimer’s disease is hampered due to the blood-brain barrier. Nanocarriers can be used to get across the barrier, but understanding their properties is challenging. The goal of the project is to create a digital platform for developing drug- and RNA-loaded nanocages targeting Alzheimer’s disease. To achieve this, they combine in-vivo experiments with an AI-powered feedback loop.
Geometric deep learning for late-stage drug discovery
Dr Bernd Ensing (HIMS), in cooperation with Dr Tati Fernández Ibáñez (HIMS), and Prof Jaap van Buul (Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences)
Endothelial cell dysfunction is a key factor in cardiovascular diseases, but there are currently no specific medications approved for treatment. An efficient but also challenging approach to optimize drug candidates is to improve their properties by changing chemical groups. The aim of this project is to further develop the latest geometric learning technologies, which can help to predict possibilities to improve properties of drugs.
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