Ariel Fernandez (born Ariel Fernández Stigliano, April 8, 1957) is an Argentinian–American

physical chemist Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mech ...

and

pharmaceutical A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field an ...

researcher.

Education and early career

Fernandez received Licentiate degrees in Chemistry (1979) and Mathematics (1980) from the

Universidad Nacional del Sur The National University of the South (in Spanish: ''Universidad Nacional del Sur'', UNS) is the largest national university in southern Argentina. Its motto is ''Ardua Veritatem'', which means "through the difficulties to the truth". The univers ...

, Argentina. He then earned a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1984 with a thesis entitled ''Structural Stability of Chemical Systems at Critical Regimes''Ariel Fernandez
Yale University Dissertation: Structural Stability of Chemical Systems at Critical Regimes (Dissipative Structures, Potential Energy Surfaces)
Published/Created:1984

Career

Fernandez held the Karl F. Hasselmann Professorship of Bioengineering at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

until 2011. He is a member of the

National Scientific and Technical Research Council National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

(CONICET) in Argentina. Fernandez developed the concept of the dehydron, an adhesive structural defect in a soluble

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

that promotes its own

dehydration In physiology, dehydration is a lack of total body water, with an accompanying disruption of metabolic processes. It occurs when free water loss exceeds free water intake, usually due to exercise, disease, or high environmental temperature. Mil ...

. The nonconserved nature of protein dehydrons has implications for drug discovery, as dehydrons may be targeted by highly specific drugs/ligands. This technology was applied by Fernandez and collaborators to design a new compound based on the anticancer drug

Gleevec Imatinib, sold under the brand names Gleevec and Glivec (both marketed worldwide by Novartis) among others, is an oral chemotherapy medication used to treat cancer. Imatinib is a small molecule inhibitor targeting multiple receptor tyrosine kin ...

, in order to reduce its

cardiotoxicity Cardiotoxicity is the occurrence of heart dysfunction as electric or muscle damage, resulting in heart toxicity. The heart becomes weaker and is not as efficient in pumping blood. Cardiotoxicity may be caused by chemotherapy (a usual example is th ...

.Dunham W. Reworked Gleevec curbs heart-related complication. REUTERS December 3, 200

/ref> In laboratory tests, the new compound was similar to Gleevec in inhibiting

gastrointestinal stromal tumor Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are the most common mesenchymal neoplasms of the gastrointestinal tract. GISTs arise in the smooth muscle pacemaker interstitial cell of Cajal, or similar cells. They are defined as tumors whose behavior ...

s, but without toxic effects on cardiac cells, although it lacked Gleevec's inhibitory effects on

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ...

cells. The editorial board of the '' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' retracted a January 2006 paper coauthored by Fernandez because it had "substantial overlap", without attribution, of figures and text from an article by Fernandez published in '' Structure'' the previous month, a form of

duplicate publication Duplicate publication, multiple publication, or redundant publication refers to publishing the same intellectual material more than once, by the author or publisher. It does not refer to the unauthorized republication by someone else, which const ...

. The website

Retraction Watch Retraction Watch is a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers and on related topics. The blog was launched in August 2010 and is produced by science writers Ivan Oransky (Former Vice President, Editorial '' Medscape'') and Adam Ma ...

has documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez has denied.

Awards

Fernandez was awarded a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award for early-career researchers in 1991; a Guggenheim Fellowship for researchers in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1995; and was elected a Fellow of the

American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991, and headquartered in Washington. It represents 50,000 medical and biomedical engineers, and academic institutions, private industry, ...

for his "contributions to understanding protein folding and protein-protein interactions and the use of this knowledge to design new drugs", in 2006.

Books

* ''Transformative Concepts for Drug Design: Target Wrapping'', by Ariel Fernández (, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010). * ''Biomolecular Interfaces'', by Ariel Fernández Stigliano (, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015). * ''Physics at the Biomolecular Interface'', by Ariel Fernández (, Springer International Publishing AG, Switzerland, 2016). * ''A Mathematical Approach to Protein Biophysics'', by L. Ridgeway Scott and Ariel Fernández (, Springer, 2017). * ''Artificial Intelligence Platform for Molecular Targeted Therapy: A Translational Science Approach'', by Ariel Fernández (, World Scientific Publishing Co., 2021). * ''Topological Dynamics in Metamodel Discovery with Artificial Intelligence: From Biomedical to Cosmological Technologies'', by Ariel Fernández (, Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, UK, 2022). * ''Artificial Intelligence on Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Reverse Engineering of the Big Bang'', by Ariel Fernández (, Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, UK, 2023).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez, Ariel 1957 births Argentine biophysicists Argentine emigrants to the United States Living people People from Bahía Blanca Physical chemists Rice University faculty Theoretical chemists Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Universidad Nacional del Sur alumni University of Miami faculty Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering