The paper “Machine-guided design for bioengineering gene therapy vectors: Where are we and what lies ahead?”, authored by LASIGE researchers Ana Filipa Rodrigues, Lucas Ferraz and Cátia Pesquita, and published in top 10% journal  Biotechnology Advances, explores how artificial intelligence and other computational approaches are transforming the design of viral vectors for gene therapy. These methods provide new ways to learn from experimental data and navigate the enormous number of possible designs that cannot be exhaustively explored in the laboratory. The work reviews how computational approaches can help predict relevant properties and generate new vectors with desired characteristics, to support the development of safer and more effective gene therapies.
The work is part of a broader research line pursued by the team at LASIGE on AI for the design of biopharmaceuticals and advanced therapies, with viral vectors as its first use case. The paper is available here.