Drug discovery

Scientists from MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, Sun Yat-sen University and Beijing-based AI startup Galixir have developed a deep-learning toolkit that can predict biosynthetic pathways for natural products, which are a primary source of clinical drug discovery, reports Xinhua Net. “The researchers presented a toolkit called Bionavi-NP to propose NP biosynthetic pathways from simple building blocks in an oprtimal fashion, which requires no already-known biochemical rules,” writes Xinhua Net.

Boston Herald reporter Rick Sobey writes that a new drug combination has shown potential in treating pancreatic cancer. “The trio drug combination is a CD40 agonist antibody, a PD-1 inhibitor and a TIGIT inhibitor. The researchers found that this combination led to pancreatic tumors shrinking in about 50% of the animals that were given this treatment,” writes Sobey.

Prof. Heidi Williams speaks with Callie Crossley as part of WGBH’s “Genius Next Door” series, which features local winners of the MacArthur “genius grant.” Williams explains that her work focuses on “whether we're getting the right kinds of medical technologies developed.”