News

New alliance with Mind the Byte to create a computational model of immune responses

- Research

The Innovation in Respiratory Infections and Tuberculosis Diagnosis Group at the IGTP is partnering with Mind the Byte to work on the characterization and binding analysis of an immunostimulant known to trigger T-cell activation, which is crucial for the initiation and regulation of the immune response.

The IGTP has extensive experience in immunopathology, Mind the Byte is a bioinformatics company specialized in discovering new drugs by using big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

One of the active projects at the IGTP led by Dr. José Domínguez and Dr. Irene Latorre, from the Innovation in Respiratory Infections and Tuberculosis Diagnosis research group, consists of determining the potential relationship between a certain immunostimulant and the T-cell receptor. Although there is experimental evidence of such an interaction, the mechanism of action remains unknown.

The combination of the different methodologies developed by Mind the Byte will be crucial to investigate the binding between the two molecules. Specifically, they will enable researchers to obtain a  deeper knowledge of the binding region and the key residues for the binding as well as being able to predict its strength. This information can be then used to identify new epitopes and to improve the current candidate molecule to improve optimization of T-cell activation.

The agreement with Mind the Byte will provide different bioinformatic tools for the IGTP project, which will facilitate extremely accurate results.  The combination of resources will allow the IGTP to continue research on immunostimulant agents. By working together, knowledge on this immunostimulant is being extended and this will enable discoveries for better immune-diagnosis of infections.