The Antoni Caparrós Prize was given this year to the close collaboration between UB researchers, led by Professor F. Javier Luque, from the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, and the company Pharmacelera. This collaboration has allowed researchers to step forward with new computer tools that enable the design of new drugs for treatments on diseases such as cancer. In particular, the research group Computational Biology and Drug Design of the UB has developed a methodology to develop new molecular describers (that is, quantitative representations of the molecular features that allow researchers to carry out a computational analysis and treatment). Using these new molecular describers, Pharmacelera has developed several tools, such as PharmOSAR and PharmScreen, a couple of softwares that help researchers finding new drugs and which have already been used by some pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies.

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