Publications related to Drug discovery

Augmenting large language models with chemistry tools

Philippe Schwaller, Oliver Tobias Schilter, Andres Camilo Marulanda Bran, Carlo Baldassari

Large language models (LLMs) have shown strong performance in tasks across domains but struggle with chemistry-related problems. These models also lack access to external knowledge sources, limiting their usefulness in scientific applications. We introduce ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Deconvolution of ex-vivo drug screening data and bulk tissue expression predicts the abundance and viability of cancer cell subpopulations

Alexandre Coudray

Ex-vivo drug sensitivity screening (DSS) allows the prediction of cancer treatment effectiveness in a personalized fashion. However, it only provides a readout on mixtures of cells, potentially occulting important information on clinically relevant cell su ...

EPFL2023

Augmented Memory: Sample-Efficient Generative Molecular Design with Reinforcement Learning

Philippe Schwaller, Jeff Guo

Sample efficiency is a fundamental challenge in de novo molecular design. Ideally, molecular generative models should learn to satisfy a desired objective under minimal calls to oracles (computational property predictors). This problem becomes more apparen ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Improved microfluidic transcriptome based screening methods

Christoph Merten, Xiaoli Ma, Leonie Kolmar, Hongxing Hu

The invention provides microfluidic screening systems for the identification of compounds or compositions influencing cellular transcriptomes. The invention is predicated upon taking into account differences in newly synthesized mRNA in contrast to so call ...

2024

Drug Screening in C. elegans to identify new pharmacological mitochondrial stress inducers

Amélia Lalou

Mitochondria are essential organelles participating in numerous cellular functions, including energy harvesting, regulation of homeostasis and apoptosis. Changes in mitochondrial number, morphology, and function not only impact cellular metabolism but also ...

EPFL2024

Bactericidal effect of tetracycline in E. coli strain ED1a may be associated with ribosome dysfunction

Camille Véronique Bernadette Goemans, Christian Eugen Zimmerli, Martin Beck

Ribosomes translate the genetic code into proteins. Recent technical advances have facilitated in situ structural analyses of ribosome functional states inside eukaryotic cells and the minimal bacterium Mycoplasma. However, such analyses of Gram-negative b ...

Nature Research2024

Development of cysteine cathepsin inhibitors combined with cell type-specific delivery for the treatment of B-cell lymphoma and solid tumors

Aaron Simone Petruzzella

Cysteine cathepsins proteases are enzymes that play essential physiological roles, but their activity is also associated to different aspects of cancer progression and to the development of other diseases. Therefore, cysteine cathepsins are relevant and pr ...

EPFL2024

From Sequence to Dynamics to Function: Computational Design of Allostery and Ligand Selectivity in G-Protein Coupled Receptors

Mahdi Hijazi

The phenomenon of allostery, a general property in proteins that has been heralded as "the second secret of life" remains elusive to our understanding and even more challenging to incorporate into protein design. One example of allosteric proteins with gre ...

EPFL2024

Artificial intelligence for natural product drug discovery

Philippe Schwaller, Florian Huber, Albert Hofstetter, Michael Alexander Skinnider

Developments in computational omics technologies have provided new means to access the hidden diversity of natural products, unearthing new potential for drug discovery. In parallel, artificial intelligence approaches such as machine learning have led to e ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Nanomole-scale photochemical thiol-ene chemistry for high-throughput late-stage diversification of peptide macrocycles

Mischa Schüttel, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Mark Daniel Nolan

The photochemical thiol-ene reaction is an efficient method for rapid and chemoselective formation of thioether linkages under mild conditions. It has found widespread use in small-molecule synthesis as well as peptide and protein chemistry. While high-thr ...

WILEY2023

Optimised three-dimensional in vitro retinoblastoma models tailored for drug discovery and clinical translatability

Irina Sinenko

Retinoblastoma, while relatively rare, stands as the most prevalent intraocular cancer. In Switzerland, the survival rate approaches 100%, but it drops to less than 50% in low-income countries. The current treatment options for retinoblastoma rely on a lim ...

EPFL2023

Asymmetric Construction of α,α‐Disubstituted Piperazinones Enabled by Benzilic Amide Rearrangement

Jieping Zhu, Hua Wu, Yuping He

An unprecedent asymmetric catalytic benzilic amide rearrangement for the synthesis of α,α-disubstituted piperazinones is reported. The reaction proceeds via a domino [4+1] imidazolidination/formal 1,2-nitro- gen shift/1,2-aryl or alkyl migration sequence, ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2023

A multi-reservoir extruder for time-resolved serial protein crystallography and compound screening at X-ray free-electron lasers

Christoph Bostedt, Camila Bacellar Cases Da Silveira

Serial crystallography at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) permits the determination of radiation-damage free static as well as time-resolved protein structures at room temperature. Efficient sample delivery is a key factor for such experiments. Here, we ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Data-Driven Discovery of Organic Electronic Materials Enabled by Hybrid Top-Down/Bottom-Up Design

Rubén Laplaza Solanas, Anne-Clémence Corminboeuf, Sergio Vela Llausi, Jacob Terence Blaskovits

The high-throughput exploration and screening of molecules for organic electronics involves either a 'top-down' curation and mining of existing repositories, or a 'bottom-up' assembly of user-defined fragments based on known synthetic templates. Both are t ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2023

The predictive capacity of in vitro preclinical models to evaluate drugs for the treatment of retinoblastoma

Paul Joseph Dyson, Irina Sinenko, Roland Christopher Turnell-Ritson

Retinoblastoma is a rare childhood cancer of the eye. Of the small number of drugs are used to treat retinoblastoma, all have been repurposed from drugs developed for other conditions. In order to find drugs or drug combinations better suited to the improv ...

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Method for hormone or drug screening in a tissue sample

Cathrin Brisken, Christoph Merten, Yueyun Zhang

The present invention relates to a method for analyzing cellular responsiveness to hormones or drags in a tissue sample based on an alginate-based 3D ex vivo culture system for normal and malignant tissue microstructures and uses thereof. ...

2023

Effective Inhibition of TDP-43 Aggregation by Native State Stabilization

Hilal Lashuel, Yllza Jasiqi, Lixin Yang

Preventing the misfolding or aggregation of transactive response DNA binding protein with 43 kDa (TDP-43) is the most actively pursued disease-modifying strategy to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. In this work, we ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2024

Automated Dual-Mode Cell Monitoring To Simultaneously Explore Calcium Dynamics and Contraction-Relaxation Kinetics within Drug-Treated Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes

Gerardo Turcatti, Benjamin Rappaz, Bokyoung Kim, Pierre Marquet

This manuscript proposes a new dual-mode cell imaging system for studying the relationships between calcium dynamics and the contractility process of cardiomyocytes derived from human-induced pluripotent stem cells. Practically, this dual-mode cell imaging ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Formation of carbonyl compounds during ozonation of lake water and wastewater: Development of a non-target screening method and quantification of target compounds

Urs von Gunten, Joanna Maria Houska

Ozonation of natural waters is typically associated with the formation of carbonyl compounds (aldehydes, ketones and ketoacids), a main class of organic disinfection byproducts (DBPs). However, the detection of carbonyl compounds in water and wastewater is ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Advancing first principle-based molecular dynamics of biological systems with machine learning

François Louis Mouvet

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have emerged as a transformative approach to analyse molecular systems at the atomic level, offering valuable insights into complex biological processes. Many biological phenomena can only accurately be described by inco ...

EPFL2023