Presentation
Organizer: IRB BioMed Seminars
Date / Time: Friday, October 16th at 12:00
Place: Fèlix Serratosa
Speaker: Professor Igor Stagljar, PhD, FRSC - Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research - Departments of Molecular Genetics & Biochemistry - Temerty Faculty of Medicine | University of Toronto - Director, Barrett Foundation Lab for Drug Discovery.
Host: Patrick Aloy, ICREA Research Professor - Group Leader IRB Barcelona - Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology Lab - Mechanisms of Disease Programme.
Abstract:
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are beginning to transform early-stage drug discovery, particularly for protein targets long considered “undruggable.” In this talk, I will first summarize our recent Nature Biotechnology paper in which we developed and applied an AI- and quantum-enhanced generative framework to design and prioritize small-molecule inhibitors against challenging cancer-relevant targets such as KRAS, demonstrating that data-driven molecular generation can efficiently navigate vast chemical space and yield compounds with validated cellular activity.
Building on this work, we are now deploying this integrated AI platform across dozens of hard-to-drug protein targets (predominantly small GTPases and receptor tyrosine kinases) implicated in diverse cancers. A central component of our strategy is the tight coupling of in silico design with live-cell technologies developed in our laboratory (MaMTH, SIMPL, and CLIP-LUX), which enable the systematic characterization, validation, and functional profiling of small-molecule modulators directly in physiologically relevant cellular contexts.
In the second part of the talk, I will present our recent discovery of a therapeutic vulnerability in glioblastoma uncovered using the Mammalian Membrane Two-Hybrid high-throughput (MaMTH-HTS) live-cell interaction platform, and discuss how these findings may open new therapeutic avenues for one of the most difficult-to-treat cancers.
Together, these studies illustrate how integrating AI with advanced live-cell technologies enables both the discovery of new druggable targets and the identification of previously unknown vulnerabilities in several difficult-to-treat cancers.
IMPORTANT: For attendees outside the PCB community you must register at least 24h before the seminar
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