C4D partners secure €1.4M NWO funding to accelerate AI‑driven antibiotic discovery
A team of partners and associated partners from C4D has been awarded funding through NWO, the Dutch Research Council’s Knowledge and Innovation Covenant Antimicrobial Resistance (KIC-AMR) programme. The KIC-AMR programme supports public–private partnerships developing new antimicrobials and complementary therapies to tackle bacterial and fungal infections in humans.
The funded project, PRIORITY – Prioritising Novel Genomic and Chemical Space via Federated Learning and Preclinical Development, aims to discover antibiotics with new chemical scaffolds. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and with access to the world’s largest collections of actinomycete strains, PRIORITY seeks to unlock previously unexplored “dark matter” in the microbial chemical space, modifying new and existing hits for improved efficacy, followed by clinical assessment.
Actinomycetes have produced the majority of clinically used antibiotics, yet recent studies indicate that only a small fraction of their biosynthetic potential has been exploited. PRIORITY will address this gap by prioritising biosynthetic gene clusters and associated metabolites for chemical novelty, biological activity, and drug‑like properties. A key innovation of the project is the use of federated learning, an advanced AI approach that allows models to learn from distributed, anonymised datasets while preserving data ownership and intellectual property. This will enable the integration of taxonomic, genomic, metabolomic, and bioactivity data at an unprecedented scale. Novel chemical scaffolds will be prioritised for biological activity and predicted drug properties. The most promising leads will then be subjected to a (pre)clinical development pipeline in collaboration with public and private partners.
The project is carried out in close collaboration with the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) and includes a strong commitment to openness: the AI‑driven discovery platform developed within PRIORITY will be made publicly available to support and accelerate antibiotic discovery worldwide. The total grant amounts to €1.4 million, including 30% matching funding from private partners NAICONS, GARDP, and Fundación MEDINA. The PRIORITY project reflects C4D’s mission to connect global expertise, advanced technologies, and open innovation to address the urgent threat of AMR.
PRIORITY Partners:
Gilles van Wezel (Coordinator), Leiden University, Netherlands
Marnix Medema, Wageningen University, Netherlands
Meta Roestenberg, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands
Joleen Masschelein, KU Leuven & VIB, Belgium
Alan Hennessy, GARDP, Geneva, Switzerland
Olga Genilloud, Fundación MEDINA, Granada, Spain
Stefano Donadio and Marianne Lorio, NAICONS, Milan, Italy
Nigel Mouncey, Joint Genome Institute, Berkeley, USA
Ben Shen, University of Florida, USA
Learn more:
Five public‑private consortia launch research into solutions for antimicrobial resistance | NWO