Cooperations

nextREGION for AI in drug design

The regional network nextREGION comprises the universities and research institutes from the wider regional neighbourhood of Saarland University - Luxembourg, France and Switzerland. This network facilitates collaboration, the exchange of ideas, data and materials, joint fundraising, teaching programmes and training visits for nextAID3 students and staff. These are long-term laboratory visits, but also shorter trips to present current work and/or learn a technique or expand knowledge on a specific topic.

Partner

Frankreich

Luxemburg

  • University Luxembourg
    • We work with Paul Wilmes and Alexandre Tkatchenko on One Health and MLbased force fields, respectively, and with Guido Kroemer from the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers on functional screening for anticancer activity utilizing a genotype-phenotype screening system.

Schweiz

  • Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute
    • Collaboration with Jennifer Keiser and Pascal Mäser on the discovery and optimization of novel antiparasitic agents.
  • Biocentre at the University of Basel
    • Several PIs have ongoing collaborations with the antiRESIST cluster (Christoph Dehio and Urs Jenal from Biozentrum Basel on antimicrobial resistance).
  • ETH CURE
    • Ongoing projects include collaborations with Gisbert Schneider (development of AI tools to optimize NPs and SMs) and Sereina Riniker (design of optimized NP analogues) from ETH CURE. ETH CURE is a new center of ETH Zurich focused on AI-driven drug discovery, con-necting related national and international initiatives.

Internationales Netzwerk

The international partner network comprises two world-leading institutions in their respective fields. We work with the Drug-Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee, a leading center for drug discovery and development based on SM medicinal chemistry, with a focus on neglected tropical diseases and antimicrobial resistance. We run joint projects on fragment growing and fragment library design with AI assistance as well as efforts to identify and develop antiparasitic compounds. Another partner is the Drug-Discovery and -Development Centre H3D at the University of Cape Town, which is Africa’s first and leading integrated drug-discovery and -development center, with a priority on innovative medicines for African patients. Collaboration with Kelly Chibale and team on tuberculosis programs and medicinal-chemistry optimization of anti-infective compounds are ongoing.