Feb 18, 2022

Pharmacology & Data Science Combine Under New Catalyst

Faculty News
Dr. Matthieu Schapira

We are excited to announce that Dr. Matthieu Schapira (Pharmacology & Toxicology, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, UofT) with Dr. Robert Batey (Chemistry, Arts & Science, UofT), have received a 2022 Data Sciences Institute (DSI) Catalyst Grant for their research proposal entitled "Informatics platform for a pan-Canadian drug discovery chemical library” of interest to the broader drug discovery community. 

“This DSI grant will allow us to computationally enumerate novel area of the chemistry space accessible only from the innovative chemistry of academic labs. This will expand the diversity of molecules that can be explored by emerging deep learning AI techniques to pharmacologically target challenging proteins that have resisted more traditional drug discovery approaches.” Says Dr. Schapira.

The DSI Catalyst Grants are supported by the University of Toronto Institutional Strategic Initiatives and external funding partners, the University Health Network, the Hospital for Sick Children and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. The grants are designed to fund multidisciplinary research teams focused on the development of new data science methodology or the innovative use of data science to address questions of major societal importance.