Date/Time Date(s) - 18/09/20262:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Categories
Prof. Jon Stokes
Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, McMaster University
Co-founder and CSO of Stoked Bio
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most urgent biomedical challenges of our time. In 2019, antibiotic-resistant infections were associated with 4.95 million deaths worldwide, and annual deaths are projected to rise to 10 million by 2050 without new antibiotics. In recent years, AI has been touted as a method to help address the antibiotic resistance crisis. In this talk, we will have an honest discussion about what AI can and can’t do to help us discover new antibiotics.
Bio: Jon Stokes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, where his laboratory develops and applies machine learning tools to discover novel antibiotics that the world urgently needs. His work has delivered some of the field’s most compelling proof that AI can uncover genuinely new therapeutic candidates: abaucin, a precision antibacterial molecule against the deadly superbug Acinetobacter baumannii; enterololin, a microbiome-sparing antibiotic now advancing toward translational development; and SyntheMol, a generative AI engine that designs entirely novel antibacterial molecules from scratch. A GARDP REVIVE expert, he is also co-founder and CSO of Stoked Bio, working to translate these discoveries from the lab into therapies that reach patients.
In-Person only: ABB 102