On-Demand: ACS Publications Industry Webinar

AI-Powered GPCR Research

Modern drug discovery is a long and tedious process which takes at least 10 years and 2 billion USD on average. How to speed up this expensive process has become one of the most essential topics in the pharmaceutical industry. With the progresses in both artificial intelligence and computational biology, advancing modern drug discovery via computational pharmacy plays more and more important roles. In this talk, Dr. Yuan will illustrate applying computational biology and artificial intelligence to answer fundamental questions in life science, especially in the area of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). He will also discuss how to speed up modern drug discovery in an ultimately efficient way. Finally, Dr. Yuan will also talk about his successful story on how to develop “first-in-class” drug molecules into clinical trials.

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SPEAKER

Shuguang Yuan, Ph.D.

Co-Founder

AlphaMol Science Ltd, Basel, Switzerland

Dr. Shuguang Yuan finished his doctoral dissertation which was funded by the Maria Curia Fellowship. It was conducted in three different institutes in Europe: EPFL(Switzerland), Polish Academy of Science (Poland) and KULeuven University (Belgium).

In his research, he investigated the principles of various biological systems including enzymes, ion channels, transporters and, and in particular, G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). In June 2013, he was awarded with a PhD title with the honor of distinguished thesis. Following that, he was offered the Marie Curie ETH Postdoc Fellowship. In 2014, Dr. Yuan proposed a theory about the activation mechanism and the continuous water channel of GPCRs (Nature Communications, 2014), which can be used to differentiate different functional molecules.

Dr Yuan worked at Idorsia (previously known as Actelion) Pharmaceutical Ltd in Basel as a specialist in computer-aided drug design (CADD) for 5 years. In the past few years, he has advanced two of his designed molecules into clinical trials. In 2018, he was honored with the title of "affiliate professor" by the University of Warsaw. In 2019, Prof. Yuan was offered a full professor position by the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, CAS. He was also the director of the "Research Center for Computer-aided Drug Discovery". In the same year, Prof. Yuan coupled with Prof. Horst Vogel established a start-up AlphaMol Science AG in both Basel and Shenzhen, to advance GPCR drug discovery.

In 2021, Prof. Yuan successfully led his team joint the Global GPCR-DOCK 2021 contest and ranked as top 1 in the opioid receptor prediction.

Since 2023, Prof. Yuan is full time working in his startup AlphaMol. In 02.2025, AlphaMol obtained their first-in-class GPCR IND approval from American FDA for clinical trial.

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