Alejandro Rodríguez Martínez
Predoctoral Researcher (AECC) · BIO-HPC · UCAM Universidad Católica de Murcia
Bioinformatician working on drug discovery for colorectal cancer, with extensive experience in virtual screening, molecular dynamics and the development of in-house computational tools.
About
Alejandro holds a BSc in Biochemistry (2019), an MSc in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (2020) and an MSc in Bioinformatics (2021), all from the University of Murcia. Before joining UCAM, he worked as a research and technical staff member at the University of Granada (2021-2023) and as a research assistant at UCAM (2023-2024).
Since 2024, he has been a predoctoral researcher at the BIO-HPC group, funded by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC). His PhD is centered on drug discovery for colorectal cancer, in particular the identification of novel fascin inhibitors through large-scale virtual screening.
He has extensive experience in virtual screening, cheminformatics and structural bioinformatics, with proficiency in Python, R, Shell scripting and tools such as GROMACS, MAESTRO-Desmond and KNIME. He has contributed to the development of group software including MetaScreener, SIBILA and ASGARD. His track record so far includes 14 publications (10 in Q1 journals), two preprints, a filed patent and multiple conference contributions.
Research focus
Colorectal cancer drug discovery
Large-scale virtual screening for novel fascin inhibitors as anti-metastatic agents in colorectal cancer, funded by AECC.
Molecular dynamics tooling
Lead developer of ASGARD, an automated analysis tool for GROMACS molecular dynamics simulations.
Antivirals & bioactives
Computational identification of antivirals against dengue, Zika and SARS-CoV-2, plus bioactive compounds from food and natural products.
Selected publications
- Discovery of Z1362873773: a novel fascin inhibitor from a large chemical library for colorectal cancer.
- Enhancing MD simulations: ASGARD’s automated analysis for GROMACS.
- ESSENCE-Dock: A Consensus-Based Approach to Enhance Virtual Screening Enrichment in Drug Discovery.
- Monastrol suppresses invasion and metastasis in human colorectal cancer cells by targeting fascin independent of kinesin-Eg5 pathway.
- A Promising Anti-dengue Virus Carboxylated-Sesquiterpene Lactone from Stevia entreriensis (Asteraceae).