Fernandez received Licentiate degrees in Chemistry (1979) and Mathematics (1980) from the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina.[1] He then earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1984 with a thesis entitled Structural Stability of Chemical Systems at Critical Regimes[2][1]
Career
Fernandez held the Karl F. Hasselmann Professorship of Bioengineering at Rice University until 2011.[3][better source needed] He is a member of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina.[4]
Fernandez developed the concept of the dehydron, an adhesive structural defect in a soluble protein that promotes its own dehydration.[5] The nonconserved nature of protein dehydrons has implications for drug discovery, as dehydrons may be targeted by highly specific drugs/ligands.[6] This technology was applied by Fernandez and collaborators to design a new compound based on the anticancer drug Gleevec, in order to reduce its cardiotoxicity.[7][8] In laboratory tests, the new compound was similar to Gleevec in inhibiting gastrointestinal stromal tumors, but without toxic effects on cardiac cells, although it lacked Gleevec's inhibitory effects on leukemia cells.[8]
The editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesretracted 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.[9] The website Retraction Watch has documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez has denied.[10]
Awards
Fernandez was awarded a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award for early-career researchers in 1991;[11] a Guggenheim Fellowship for researchers in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1995;[12] and was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering for his "contributions to understanding protein folding and protein-protein interactions and the use of this knowledge to design new drugs", in 2006.[13]
Books
Transformative Concepts for Drug Design: Target Wrapping, by Ariel Fernández (ISBN978-3642117916, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010).
Physics at the Biomolecular Interface, by Ariel Fernández (ISBN978-3319308517, Springer International Publishing AG, Switzerland, 2016).[14]
A Mathematical Approach to Protein Biophysics, by L. Ridgeway Scott and Ariel Fernández (ISBN978-3319660318, Springer, 2017).
Artificial Intelligence Platform for Molecular Targeted Therapy: A Translational Science Approach, by Ariel Fernández (ISBN978-9811232305, World Scientific Publishing Co., 2021).
Topological Dynamics in Metamodel Discovery with Artificial Intelligence: From Biomedical to Cosmological Technologies, by Ariel Fernández (ISBN978-1032366326, Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, UK, 2022).
Artificial Intelligence on Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Reverse Engineering of the Big Bang, by Ariel Fernández (ISBN978-1032465548, Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, UK, 2023).
↑Demetri G. D. Structural reengineering of imatinib to decrease cardiac risk in cancer therapy.2007 Dec 3; J Clin Invest. 117(12):3650–3653. doi 10.1172/JCI34252 [1]
↑ 8.08.1Dunham W. Reworked Gleevec curbs heart-related complication. REUTERS December 3, 2007 [2]