César de la Fuente
@delafuentelab.bsky.social
570 followers 6 following 260 posts
Presidential Associate Professor @upenn.bsky.social - using AI to reimagine antibiotic discovery and peptide design. Previously @MIT, @UBC 🔗 https://delafuentelab.seas.upenn.edu
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
delafuentelab.bsky.social
AI has already accelerated our ability to discover new antibiotic candidates so I think this is the beginning, though a lot more work needs to be done to take these candidates through clinical trials.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(2/2)We can now mine genetic data from extant and ancient biology for new compounds, design new-to-nature molecules from scratch using generative AI, and develop models to outsmart emerging resistant bacteria. Thank you @asm.org for covering our @upenn.edu lab's work! @pennmedcso.bsky.social
Harnessing AI to Revolutionize Antibiotic Discovery | ASM.org
The world desperately needs new antibiotics. Scientists are leveraging AI to accelerate drug discovery, transforming how—and where—we look for new compounds to defeat resistant bacteria.
asm.org
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(1/2) AI is redefining antibiotic discovery. What once took years with traditional methods can now be done in hours.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(9/9)Incredible Team work: Hanqun Cao, Marcelo D. T. Torres, Jingjie Zhang, Zijun Gao, Fang Wu, Chunbin Gu, Jure Leskovec, Yejin Choi, Guangyong Chen, Pheng-Ann Heng

#ReinforcementLearning #AI #DrugDiscovery #Antibiotics #AMR #ProteinLM #SyntheticBiology #Biotech #ApexAmphion
A deep reinforcement learning platform for antibiotic discovery
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is projected to cause up to 10 million deaths annually by 2050, underscoring the urgent need for new antibiotics. Here we present ApexAmphion, a deep-learning framework ...
arxiv.org
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(8/9)We’re compressing years of trial-and-error into hours-scale loops, expanding the space of antimicrobial discovery, and executing a programmable RL pipeline that moves from games to potential life-saving therapeutics.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(7/9)In other words, our ApexAmphion model has now mastered antibiotic discovery and can design promising candidates within hours, often in a single morning or afternoon.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(6/9)• Multi-objective rewards: predicted MIC + key physicochemical properties
• Rapid & steerable: tune potency and developability on demand
• Amphorium: >2 million machine-annotated candidates for follow-up
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(5/9)Iteration by iteration, the system learns to design better molecules.
𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 (𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝-𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬):
• 100/100 designed molecules active in vitro (100% hit rate)
• 99/100 active against ≥2 clinically relevant pathogens (incl. MDR)
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(4/9)Instead of chess moves, the agent proposes peptide sequences (candidate antibiotics). Instead of a scoreboard, it receives multi-objective rewards tied to predicted potency (minimum inhibitory concentration, MIC) and developability—properties that make a drug more likely to succeed.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(3/9)In games, RL agents explore vast decision spaces and optimize toward rewards (winning). ApexAmphion brings the same logic to biology.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(2/9)I’m thrilled to introduce ApexAmphion—inspired by the systems that mastered Go and StarCraft. We pair a 6.4B-parameter protein language model with PPO in a closed loop to generate → score → optimize antibiotic candidates at digital speed.
A deep reinforcement learning platform for antibiotic discovery
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is projected to cause up to 10 million deaths annually by 2050, underscoring the urgent need for new antibiotics. Here we present ApexAmphion, a deep-learning framework ...
arxiv.org
delafuentelab.bsky.social
(1/9)For over a century, antibiotics were found by slow, painstaking, serendipitous screening.
Today we share a different path: the first demonstration of deep reinforcement learning (RL) for antibiotic discovery.
delafuentelab.bsky.social
Grateful to @inquirer.com and Kela Yub for the feature on our lab's work. Using AI, we are unlocking the hidden therapeutic potential of nature, including in venoms, turning centuries-old drug discovery into approaches that reveal antibiotic candidates in minutes.
Congrats to Xue Sherry Gao as well
How Philadelphia scientists turn toxic fungi, snake venom, and trees into medicine
Scientists are using new tools and technologies like artificial intelligence to look for new medicines in plants and other natural products, advancing a centuries-old approach to drug discovery.
www.inquirer.com