Two McMaster graduate students have been recognized on the international stage, earning top honours at a recent Gordon Research Conference that focused on the urgent global need for new antibacterial medicine.
Denise Catacutan and Jeremie Alexander — both members of assistant professor Jon Stokes’ laboratory — secured the gold and bronze medals respectively in the conference’s highly competitive poster competition, which featured more than 120 trainees from all over the world.
Catacutan’s conference-best presentation detailed the discovery and AI-guided characterization of a novel antibiotic candidate designed to treat inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), and Alexander’s research involved harnessing language models inspired by leading models like ChatGPT to learn the grammar of chemical space and design novel molecules with antibacterial activity.
That two of the conference’s medalists presented AI-driven drug discovery research and hailed from McMaster underscores not only the rapid rise of machine learning in the field, but also the university’s position as a global leader in next-generation antibiotic discovery.
“I’m proud of the work we’re doing at McMaster, but you don’t fully realize how much it resonates until you’re at meetings like this,” says Alexander. “People stop in their tracks when they hear you’re from McMaster — there’s an immediate recognition and excitement about the research coming out of the university.”
Catacutan credits McMaster’s extensive drug discovery infrastructure, including the Centre for Microbial Chemical Biology, for enabling such high-profile research. She also points to the stature of the university’s top antibiotic researchers — including Gerry Wright, Brian Coombes, and Eric Brown — as a key factor in elevating the university’s global reputation in the field.
“People quickly recognize the names of the scientists we work with,” says Catacutan, who also delivered two invited lectures at the conference. “Having these foundational experts just a short walk down the hall allows us to pick their brains and apply their expertise to our own research.”
The five-day conference, held in Barga, Italy, brought together leading scientists from around the world to share cutting-edge advances in antibiotic discovery at a time of increasing concern over antimicrobial resistance, which occurs when bacteria evolve to resist the drugs designed to kill them.
Founded in 1931, the Gordon Research Conferences are among the longest-running and most prestigious scientific gatherings, covering a range of topics from across the biological, chemical, physical, and engineering sciences.
“This is one of the most highly regarded antibiotics conferences in the world,” says Stokes, a member of McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. “Medalling there is an incredible achievement given the scope of the highly impactful work that is presented at these meetings, and I’m proud of my group for making a strong impression on this year’s participants.”