Dear All,
I would like to circulate some current Cheminformatics- (and related) news to everyone as follows – in particular, our next Cambridge Cheminformatics Meeting will take place on 18 February (with a Co-Folding Special!), as usual in hybrid mode at the CCDC and on Zoom, for details please see below.
So here we go…
Events
10-12 February 2026
Applied ML Days
Lausanne, Switzerland
https://2026.appliedmldays.org
18 February 2026
Cambridge Cheminformatics Meeting – Co-Folding Special!
Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, Cambridge, UK and Online (Hybrid Mode)
Zoom participation(link will be live at event start, just join a few minutes beforehand):
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/87555688864?pwd=bHhBnEbt1bCnl1BDPRnWYX4Qay621M.1
More Information about meeting series: https://c-inf.net
Programme
Beyond Public Data: Federated and Locally Fine-Tuned Co-Folding Models for Protein–Ligand Complexes
Robin Roehm, Apheris
Observations on Using Boltz2 Co-Folding for Drug Design
Henriette Willems, ALBORADA Research Institute
SureChEMBL 2.0: Now With Added Disease and Protein Annotations
Nicolas Bosc, EBI
Also note our future dates in 2026: 22 April, 2 September, 11 November
17 March 2026
Discngine Labs Live: Navigating Developability Challenges Across Antibody Modalities
Basel, Switzerland and Online (Hybrid Mode)
https://www.discngine.com/discngine-labs-live-in-basel
21 April 2026
UK-QSAR 2026
Edinburgh, UK
https://www.biosolveit.de/2025/12/08/save-the-date-uk-qsar-2026-in-edinburgh-on-21-april-2026
27/28 April 2026
SDDS 2026: Stanford Drug Discovery Symposium
Stanford University, CA and Online (Hybrid Mode)
https://med.stanford.edu/cvi/events/sdds2026-stanford-drug-discovery-symposium.html
30 April 2026
1st UAE Drug Discovery, Biotechnology & Beyond Symposium
Abu Dhabi, UAE
https://genetic.ae/2025/12/15/1st-uae-drug-discovery-biotechnology-symposium-from-science-to-translation
10/11 June 2026
2nd ChEMBL User Group Meeting
Hinxton, UK and Virtual (Hybrid Mode)
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/events/events/public-event/2026/ebi-9
27 September – 1 October 2026
25th EuroQSAR Symposium
Perugia, Italy
http://euroqsar.org
Vacancies
Scientist, Computational Medicinal Chemistry
Monte Rosa Therapeutics
Basel, Switzerland
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4344094353
Scientist Computational Chemistry
Nuvisan
Berlin, Germany
https://career.nuvisan.com/jobs/62099464/Scientist-m-f-d-Computational-Chemistry
Senior Principal Scientist, CADD
Johnson&Johnson
Beerse,Belgium
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4366766966
Bioinformatician
Healx
Cambridge, UK
https://jobs.lever.co/healx/11b1eff6-f194-4c22-9be5-5f0b46f637cc?lever-via=D8LkrJpH0l&lever-social=job_site
Data Scientist Biologicals Research
Syngenta
Bracknell, UK
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4366341065
Research Fellow in AI and Computational Chemistry
Leeds University
Leeds, UK
https://jobs.leeds.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=EPSCH1127
Application Scientist
Aqemia
Paris, France / London, UK
https://jobs.lever.co/aqemia.com/2676f8f2-bdf0-4530-aaab-63e39d2273f4
Professor for Drug Design and Development
Jena University
Jena, Germany
https://berufungsportal.uni-jena.de/?showProcedure=7B02261D-A2CE-62E2-132A-C3BB0886BD63
CADD Software Developer, Senior Data Scientist, other roles
Chemify
Glasgow, UK
https://www.chemify.io/careers
Computational Drug Designer
Isomorphic Labs
London, UK or Lausanne, Switzerland
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4311587703
Research Group Leader
EMBL-EBI
Cambridge, UK
https://embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/job/Research-Group-Leader_JR2407
Research Associate on GenAI Applied to Drug Discovery
IRB Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
https://recruitment.irbbarcelona.org/jobs/6928145-research-associate-on-genai-applied-to-drug-discovery-ref-pd-25-23
PhD Position – Molecular Glue Modelling with AlphaFold3
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast, UK
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/molecular-glue-modelling-with-alphafold3/?p185982
PhD Positions in Computational Life Sciences
UCAM
Murcia, Spain
https://bio-hpc.eu
Cheminformatics…
Video of Cambridge Cheminformatics Meeting on 12 November 2025 is online
https://youtu.be/03E0YSQ_Lxo
…covering causal machine learning, graph neural nets for structure confirmation via NMR, and the unintended consequences of virtual deuteration enumeration in patents
We Still Haven’t Found What We’re Looking For – The Continuing Evolution of Protein-Ligand Co-Folding Methods
https://patwalters.github.io/Cofolding-Evolution
Comment by Pat Walters
Investigating whether deep learning models for co-folding learn the physics of protein-ligand interactions
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63947-5
well, not quite it seems
Assessing Boltz-2 Performance for the Binding Classification of Docking Hits
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jcim.5c02630
by Didier Rognan and colleagues
This Week In Cheminformatics
https://thisweekincheminformatics.substack.com
Cheminformatics Newsletter by Manas Mahale
AI Agents in Drug Discovery
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.27130
Some use cases as per the title
The OpenADMET – ExpansionRx Blind Challenge has Come to an End
https://openadmet.ghost.io/the-openadmet-expansionrx-blind-challenge-has-come-to-an-end
Overview of the results and learnings
… beyond cheminformatics …
Biotech Unveiled: Understanding the U.S. Biomedical Innovation Marketplace and its Global Role
https://racap.thinkific.com/courses/biotechunveiled
Free course, more general than the title implies
Evaluating Large Language Models in Scientific Discovery
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.15567
Finally a more grounded article on the topic
Why you shouldn’t trust data collected on MTurk
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-025-02852-7
Sometimes what shouldn’t be correlated still is
BioAtlas
https://crowd.vivamed.com/bioatlas
‘490+ million rows integrating genetics, expression, perturbations, drugs, and disease into one harmonized, queryable PostgreSQL database’
There is no such thing as a validated prediction model
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-023-02779-w
In the medical context, but applies generally across biology (and beyond)
Hub-and-Spoke Biotechs: Nimbus Therapeutics
https://centuryofbio.com/p/nimbus
Excellent write-up
Atlas Venture Year in Review 2025 – B. Booth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrNoJe4eNIM
As the title says
China leads research in 90% of crucial technologies — a dramatic shift this century
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04048-7
Yes, things change
A Brief History of CHO Cells
https://biomanufacturing.org/uploads/files/547998065159985597-cho-history.pdf
Now What?
https://pni.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf321/files/documents/John%20Hopfield%20Now%20What%203_0.pdf
What should we do with our lives, what matters? By John ‘Hopfield-Network’ Hopfield
Extracting books from production language models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671
Related: ‘OpenAI alleged that the ChatGPT did not store specific training data but only statistical knowledge in its parameters and claimed…’
https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/gema-vs-openai-ai-memorisation-reproduction-relevant-copyright-law-and-tdm-exception-does
Also related: The death of Aaron Swartz
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ramsesrodriguez_hoy-8-de-noviembre-el-desarrollador-y-hacktivista-activity-7392962060147630080-jQP0
AI as Normal Technology
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology
… and clearly beyond cheminformatics
‘anyone wanna team up with me to make a company with no viable product and a very pretty website to get money out of VCs’
https://www.reddit.com/r/biotech/comments/1ojhkza/anyone_wanna_team_up_with_me_to_make_a_company
How it really works (kind of)
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself
WeWingAnyCar.com
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/olifrost_uk-privatejets-sustainability-ugcPost-7392122275753521152-Zd2i
How to avoid fuel duty… gotta be creative!
The Great AI Earnings Illusion: How Silicon Valley Engineered $170 Billion in Phantom Profits
https://substack.com/inbox/post/178568795
Give it a few years
How The Hell Are You Supposed to Have a Career in Tech in 2026?
https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/05/a-tech-career-in-2026
Not so easy
Buried Talents – How Elites betray their own potential
https://edankrolewicz.substack.com/p/buried-talents
How AI Destroys Institutions
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5870623
What technology takes from us – and how to take it back
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/29/what-technology-takes-from-us-and-how-to-take-it-back
Music Corner
Pedestrians – I Haven’t
https://tidal.com/track/38839808/u
I Haven’t Got a Manager…
Yaima – Citadella
https://tidal.com/track/236216531/u
The Yaima Music Project is a Cascadian Folktronic Duo…
Federico Aubele – 5
https://tidal.com/album/22652027/u
From Argentina
God is an Astronat – All Is Violent, All Is Bright
https://tidal.com/album/21078300/u
From County Wicklow
Slash – Anastasia
https://tidal.com/track/15273159/u
Pretty much to the point
Bjorn Lynne – Savannah
https://tidal.com/track/27830512/u
Likely I also listened to his music when playing on my Amiga in the late 1990s… quite funny how life is connected when you get older
Bass Corner (this probably became my favourite instrument to listen to recently)
Renaud Garcia-Fons – e.g. Berimbass
https://tidal.com/track/173669622/u
Kham Meslien – Ta confiance
https://tidal.com/track/235270648/u
Madeleine Peyroux – Tango Till They’re Sore
https://tidal.com/track/77657003/u
Also see album, Secular Hymns: https://tidal.com/album/77657001/u
I believe this is all from my side for now – as usual, if you have any information for me to circulate, or wish to present at one of our next Cambridge Cheminformatics Meetings, please just get in touch, cheers!
Best wishes,
Andreas