Join the first episode in our Researcher Live series on 'Antibiotic & Antimicrobial Resistance' on 3rd October at 2.30pm BST/1.30pm GMT, for an exclusive talk with Presidential Assistant Professor César de la Fuente (University of Pennsylvania). Sign up here to receive email reminders for this series!
What are we going to talk about in this episode?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to outperform humans and revolutionize our world. In this talk, Prof César de la Fuente will describe how his research group use AI to develop computational approaches for antibiotic design and discovery. Computers can already be programmed for superhuman pattern recognition of images and text. In order for machines to discover novel antibiotics, they have to first be trained to sort through the many characteristics of molecules and determine which properties should be retained, suppressed, or enhanced to optimize antimicrobial activity. Said differently, machines need to be able to understand, read, write, and eventually create new molecules.
Prof César de la Fuente will discuss how his lab trained a computer to execute a fitness function following a Darwinian algorithm of evolution. This allowed the machine to select for molecular structures that interact with bacterial membranes, yielding the first artificial antimicrobials that kill bacteria both in vitro and in relevant animal models. Prof César de la Fuente's lab has also developed pattern recognition algorithms to mine the human proteome, identifying throughout the body thousands of antibiotics encoded in proteins with unrelated biological functions, and has applied computational tools to successfully reprogram venoms into novel antimicrobials. Computer-generated designs and innovations at the intersection between machine and human intelligence may help to replenish our arsenal of effective drugs, providing much-needed solutions to global health problems caused by infectious diseases.
The slides for this event can be found here.
Series programme:
- 3rd October, 2.30pm BST / 1.30pm GMT - ‘Artificial intelligence approaches for antibiotic discovery’ with César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
- 18th October, 10am BST / 9am GMT - ‘Biofilm communities, antimicrobials and antimicrobial resistance’ with Prof Kim Hardie, University of Nottingham
- 10th November, 10am BST / GMT - ‘Antibiotics: from databases to evolution in patients’ with Prof Robert Beardmore, University of Exeter
Please follow Researcher Live’s profile ‘Researcher In Practice in Immunology’ to keep up with posts, interviews with experts and other exciting events in immunology!
If you'd like to present at your own Researcher Live event, please email kristine.lennie@researcher-app.com
02:30 pm BST / 01:30 pm GMT
César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
César de la Fuente is a Presidential Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads the Machine Biology Group whose goal is to combine the power of machines and biology to help prevent, detect, and treat infectious diseases. Specifically, he pioneered the development of the first antibiotic designed by a computer with efficacy in animals, designed algorithms for antibiotic discovery, reprogrammed venoms into antimicrobials, created novel resistance-proof antimicrobial materials, and invented rapid low-cost diagnostics for COVID-19 and other infections.
De la Fuente is an NIH MIRA investigator and has received recognition and research funding from numerous other groups. Prof. de la Fuente has received over 50 awards. He was recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top innovators for “digitizing evolution to make better antibiotics”. He was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Langer Prize, an ACS Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry, and received the AIChE’s 35 Under 35 Award and the ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award. In 2021, he received the Thermo Fisher Award, and the EMBS Academic Early Career Achievement Award “For the pioneering development of novel antibiotics designed using principles from computation, engineering, and biology.”
Most recently, Prof. de la Fuente was awarded the prestigious Princess of Girona Prize for Scientific Research, the ASM Award for Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research and was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate. Prof. de la Fuente has given over 200 invited lectures and his scientific discoveries have yielded over 100 publications, including papers in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Communications, PNAS, ACS Nano, Cell, Nature Chemical Biology, Advanced Materials, and multiple patents.
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