17/05/2026
Congratulations to Sir Remmer Salas, faculty member of the Department of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, for being part of the research team from the University of the Philippines Diliman that developed ISCAPE, an AI tool designed to accelerate antibiotic discovery. Your remarkable contribution to science and innovation brings pride and inspiration to our department and the entire academic community.
UP chemists develop AI tool to speed up antibiotic discovery
Researchers from the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Science have created an AI system called ISCAPE that helps quickly identify peptides (small proteins) that could act as antibiotics.
The AI tool was developed by Remmer Salas, Dr. Portia Mahal Sabido, and Dr. Ricky Nellas.
Instead of testing each compound in the lab one by one, the tool uses a simple molecular code (SMILES) to predict whether a peptide can kill or stop the growth of E. coli, a bacteria that can cause food poisoning, diarrhea, and urinary tract infections.
The AI also explains which parts of a molecule make it effective, helping scientists design better antibiotic candidates faster and with fewer experiments.
The tool is publicly available online through Hugging Face Spaces, with its code and data also shared on GitHub for other researchers to use and improve.
The research titled โInterpretable support vector classifier for reliable prediction of antibacterial activity of modified peptides against Escherichia coliโ is published in the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling.
