Faster, cheaper and more sustainable drug development is to be made possible by the breakthrough technology platform AMADEUS, which is being developed at Palacký University in Olomouc by renowned chemist Alexander Dömling thanks to a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grant of €3.4 million. The system will use an autonomous, artificial intelligence-driven and highly miniaturised procedure to identify compounds for synthesising new substances or improving their properties. 

The five-year project, called Automated, Miniaturised and Accelerated Drug Discovery (AMADEUS), aims to accelerate the development of new compounds, reduce the financial cost and environmental burden of the process and increase its safety. The use of miniaturisation and automation is proving to be an appropriate approach to do just that.

„The use of current tools such as artificial intelligence or miniaturisation brings new possibilities to scientific research. I am glad that we are one of the universities that, thanks to cutting-edge research, help to find ways to save time and money in such an important process as the development of new drugs. Success in this area will have a clear societal impact,“ said Palacký University Rector Martin Procházka.

In a hundred thousand times smaller...

Researchers will be working in syntheses that are hundreds of thousands of times smaller than current industrial processes. „We will design and validate a complex technology platform, AMADEUS, which is capable of synthesising thousands of small molecules per day in nano- or picoliter volumes based on hundreds of chemical reactions, which we can efficiently investigate and improve their properties using artificial intelligence. This downscaling will also significantly reduce toxic waste, making the drug development process more sustainable and faster at the same time. My ambition is to fundamentally change the early stage of drug discovery that has been used in pharmaceutical companies around the world for more than half a century,“ said Dömling, who is based at Palacký University's Czech Institute for Research and Advanced Technologies - CATRIN.

The idea for the AMADEUS project dates back more than 30 years ago, when Dömling initiated his first startup company as a postdoc. At the forefront of technological development today is the drive to combine chemistry automation, high-throughput screening and compound optimization with artificial intelligence, aiming to dramatically accelerate early drug discovery. It is the high miniaturization and automation of synthetic chemistry that is key in the new version of the AMADEUS platform, which Dömling and his group will introduce in 2019. According to him, AMADEUS (Automated, MiniAturizeD, and acceleratEd drUg diScovery) can find applications not only in medicinal chemistry, but also in catalysis, in improving the properties of materials or plants.

Source - CATRIN, Palacký University in Olomouc
Photo - source - Palacký University in Olomouc