Pioneering AI in Drug Discovery: Accelerating Fibrosis Treatment with an Innovative Interdisciplinary Approach

In a groundbreaking fellowship project, Kevin Merchant wants to use AI to speed up the traditionally slow, cost- and labor-intensive process of identifying therapeutic compounds against fibrosis. Despite advances in medical research and treatment options, there remains a significant unmet medical need for certain forms of lung fibrosis. Kevin’s project fuses medicinal chemistry and biomedical research with cutting-edge AI models to streamline the drug discovery process, focusing initially on fibrosis but also with a potential for broader applications. The Joachim Herz Foundation is funding this project with 12,500 euros over a period of two years.

At the heart of the project stands a “top-down approach” to drug discovery, in synergy with powerful computational models trained to analyze thousands of chemical compounds and predict their effectiveness in treating diseases. Traditionally, screening of compounds involves manual laboratory testing, a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. In this project, AI performs the initial screening, investigating huge compound libraries by identifying specific molecular “signatures.” These models will be trained to recognize complex chemical patterns indicating antifibrotic activity, thus effectively determining if a compound qualifies as a “hit” for further testing.

Given the project’s scale and ambition, Kevin Merchant, a PhD candidate in the lab of Gerald Burgstaller, will be collaborating with labs of Michael Gerckens (LHI), Ewa Szczurek (AIH), and Oliver Plettenburg (IMC) to bring it to fruition. 

Ultimately, the potential outcomes could be game-changing: more effective fibrosis treatments, a patent or publication, and another use case of AI in drug discovery.

About the Joachim Herz Foundation:

The Joachim Herz Foundation promotes education and science in research and teaching in the natural sciences, economics, law, medicine, engineering and personal development. Interdisciplinary projects and research approaches play a special role and will be the focus of future funding activities. The funding is aimed at PhD students and postdocs working on interdisciplinary research questions at the interfaces between life sciences and physics, computer science, mathematics, engineering and related research fields. For example, biologists can immerse themselves in mathematics and modelers in the life sciences. With the Add-on Fellowship, postdocs and doctoral students receive financial support of up to 12,500 euros over a period of two years.

More information: https://www.joachim-herz-stiftung.de/en/