Computational and machine learning approaches to improve design and screening of high bioactivity peptides for drug discovery

The cost of developing new drugs is now widely acknowledged by industry leaders as prohibitive, with some estimates now in excess of $ 5B per drug. It is imperative that new approaches are developed to mitigate the cost and time required to bring new drugs to market. To help achieve this, we contend that new techniques in machine learning must be brought to bear on the drug development process. We plan to use machine learning approach to help in building better drugs by improving the process of finding molecular structure using the building blocks of proteins, the amino acids, which could one day serve as models to create drugs against microbes. The process could be extended to other fields (cancerology, neurology, infectious and immunological diseases, among many others) since the methods developed can be adapted easily.

Faculty Supervisor:

Sylvain Moineau

Student:

Francis Brochu

Partner:

Consortium québécois sur la découverte du médicament

Discipline:

Biochemistry / Molecular biology

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Université Laval