Research Line of Computational Biology

Machine learning for drug discovery

Using machine learning and chemoinformatics approaches to discover novel molecules with desired biological activity

Discovering innovative molecules with the desired bioactivity is an essential step to develop new drugs and gather a greater understanding of biological systems. Machine learning bears promise to accelerate the molecule discovery pipeline, by allowing for a time- and cost-efficient navigation of the incredibly vast chemical universe. The Molecular Machine Learning team at TU/e, led by Dr. Francesca Grisoni, develops and applies data-driven methods to design novel molecular entities and unveil structure-activity relationships of small molecules and peptides. With research located at the interface between chemical biology and AI, our final mission is to develop cutting-edge computational tools to augment human intelligence in molecular discovery and drug development.

Our current areas of research are:

  1. Generative deep learning, to design novel molecules with desired properties from scratch without the need for human-engineered construction rules.
  2. AI-driven multi-objective compound discovery, e.g., for selectivity optimization and polypharmacology.
  3. Development and analysis of molecular representations suited to machine learning in chemical biology.
  4. Low-data regime machine learning, to allow molecule discovery on unexplored macromolecular targets.