News First results of the MELINA project funded by the ‘Momentum CSIC’ programme

Last Monday, 24 November, the results obtained during the first year of the MELINA project were presented. The project is funded by the ‘Momentum CSIC’ programme, which promotes scientific advances through AI, in a public open session held at the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC). The project is led by Ibane Abasolo, principal investigator of the ‘Nanomedicine for Therapeutic Applications’ group, and Sergi Vela, researcher in the ‘Theoretical and Computational Chemistry’ group.

The ‘Momentum CSIC’ programme is part of the ‘Generación D’ initiative, funded by the State Secretariat for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, through Red.es, and forms part of the National Digital Skills Plan.

This programme, supported by European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, has enabled the hiring of research and technical staff in 114 CSIC centres for the development of 158 research and innovation projects in advanced digital skills in areas such as sustainability, health and energy.

MELINA (Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for the optimisation of Nanomedicines) is one of the projects supported by this funding, and it aims to develop and harness the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and more specifically machine learning (ML), for the experimental design of new nanomedicines.

During this first year, the foundations have been laid for an AI model that will allow nanomedicines to be designed more quickly and efficiently, thanks to the detailed study of polymeric micelles. This was explained by Emma Reig Martí and Raúl Santiago Piera, PhD student and postdoctoral researcher of the project, before the expert committee formed by Ramon Guixà (IQAC-CSIC), Miriam Royo (IQAC-CSIC), Sílvia Pujals (IQAC-CSIC) and Mariana Kober (ICMAB-CSIC).