Por Ana Filipa Rodrigues (LASIGE).

Machine learning (ML) transformed protein design, offering unprecedented opportunities to accelerate and refine the development of bioengineered proteins. Building on the latest advancements in this area, researchers are extending these innovations to therapeutic viral particles, focusing on viral vectors for gene therapy. The precise design and bioengineering of viral particles hold immense potential not only to advance the field of virus-based therapeutics, such as viral gene therapy, but also to foster discoveries in virology, including uncovering virus-host interactions and developing better vaccines and antivirals.

In ML-based protein design, models are trained on protein sequence data to learn the complex relationship between amino acid sequences and their corresponding effects on protein function. These models learn to navigate the sequence-to-function fitness landscape, enabling the prediction and the design of novel proteins with specific characteristics. This seminar will cover the core methodologies in ML-guided protein design, emphasizing key concepts, models, and applications. It will also explore how these advancements are being leveraged in the bioengineering of viral vectors, focusing on our ongoing research on designing new adeno-associated viral vectors (AAVs) for human gene therapy.

Short bio: Ana Filipa Rodrigues holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology (2014) from NOVA University Lisbon and the University of Minnesota (USA). Her early research focused on improving viral vector production for human gene therapy using functional genomics and genetic engineering. In her post-doctoral research at the Experimental Virology Department of Hannover Medical School/TWINCORE (Germany), she studied virus-host interactions to aid the development of antiviral therapies and vaccines.

In recent years, Filipa has worked at the intersection of academic research and the biopharmaceutical industry, specializing in cell and gene therapy, viral vaccines, molecular biology, and bioprocess engineering. She has recently joined the LASIGE Research Centre for Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Lisbon, where she applies machine learning to design and bioengineer therapeutic viral particles.