Latest updates

New paper presenting hurdles and signposts on the road to virtual control groups!

2023.04.20 · By Alexander Gujarnov

Have a look on our newest publication presenting a method to generate and validate Virtual Control Groups (VCGs) in systemic toxicity studies. This paper highlights the impact of anesthetics on measured electrolytes in animals and presents how these anesthetic protocols can affect the performance of virtual control groups. This article was published by Alexander, our PhD student at Bayer Pharmaceuticals as a member of the eTRANSAFE Virtual Control Groups team. 

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Our collaboration on a chemical language model is out !

2023.04.03 · By Andrea Volkamer

Great collaborative work with IBM research and ETH Zürich is now published in Digital discovery. The model for molecular property prediction is validated on the large proprietary toxicity dataset from our previous study (Webel, 2020), uses uncertainty to improve reliability, reveals cytotoxic motifs via attention and outperforms existing approaches! You can check the paper on Born, 2023 and the code of the model is available here.

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Floriane Odje joins Volkamer’s lab

2023.02.01 · By Floriane Odje

Floriane holds a bachelor’s degree in life science and bioinformatics and a master’s degree in bioinformatics and in Silico drug design from the University of Paris. She joined our lab in February 2023 as a PhD candidate to be part of the BMBF-funded MORPHEUS project. She will work on the development of deep learning models to predict the effects of substances and identify characteristic fingerprints based on morphological (cell painting) and molecular input data.

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ML for small molecule DD paper out!

2023.01.05 · By Andrea Volkamer

Take a look at our newest opinion paper Machine learning for small molecule drug discovery in academia and industry. Great collaboration with academic and industry colleagues discussing advances and challenges in molecular machine learning. Despite common overarching goals, we highlight the differences between academic and industry to improve models for e.g. drug selection and share ideas to improve collaborations. Thanks to all co-authors for working together on this project with such enthusiasm!

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Paula joins Volkamer lab

2022.12.01 · By Paula Linh Kramer

Paula completed her Bioinformatics bachelor’s and master’s at Saarland University. She is joining Volkamer lab as a PhD candidate as part of the NEDD research group, where the focus is on deep learning for drug discovery. She will be working on combining deep learning with fragment based drug design to generate novel ligand candidates for kinase inhibition.

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Volkamer lab moved to Saarbrücken!!!

2022.08.01 · By Andrea Volkamer

We are happy to announce that the lab moved to Saarland University, where we focus on Data Driven Drug Design! We are embedded in a vibrant environment, located in the Center for Bioinformatics and being part of Saarland Informatics Campus as well as the HIPS. We are thankful for the time at Charité Berlin and are looking forward to many interesting projects and collaborations in Saarbrücken.

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07.04.22 - Struc2Drug seminar for April

2022.03.31 · By Corey Taylor

Struc2Drug The latest iteration of Struc2Drug, will be held on Thu 07. April 2022, 4pm - 5pm CET by the Volkamer Lab. Struc2drug is a bimonthly seminar series promoting the exchange between researchers in the interdisciplinary field of structural biology and drug development in Berlin. Confirmed speakers for the next series include: Dr. Mikhail Kudryashev (Kudryashev lab, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin) “Activation of the serotonin receptor ion channel 5-HT3 probed by cryo-EM” Vasilii Mikirtumov (Kudryashev lab, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin) “Structure and activation mechanism of ryanodine receptor isoform 1 in native membrane” No registration is needed, please join the meeting via FU berlin at https://fu-berlin.

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OpenCADD-KLIFS module: KLIFS meets Python!

2022.02.17 · By Dominique Sydow

The KLIFS database is a rich resource for datasets focused on kinase pockets, ranging from annotated pockets and ligand interaction patterns in experimental PDB structures to ligand bioactivity values from the ChEMBL database. It is possible to explore the KLIFS resource via their web interface online (NAR 2021) or locally using dedicated KNIME nodes (JCIM 2017 and ChemMedChem 2018 developed by the KLIFS authors. With OpenCADD-KLIFS, we now add a Python solution for easy and quick integration of KLIFS datasets into Python-based pipelines.

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17.02.22 - Two drug discovery seminars to be held online in February

2022.02.03 · By Corey Taylor

Digidrug First up, on Thu 17. February 2022, 4pm - 5:30pm CET the next episode of the virtual seminar series, Digital Science for Drug Discovery will be held. Focused on the Berlin region, the series aims to facilitate and enmesh relationships between researchers working within both academia and industry. The over-arching theme? Making efficient and creative use of the wealth of available and growing chemical and biological data combined with powerful computational means at our disposal.

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