Dimitrios Vlachakis

Agricultural University of Athens

Dr. Dimitrios Vlachakis is an Assistant Professor at the Genetics Laboratory at the Biotechnology Department of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece. He leads the Genetics and Computational Biology Group and his main scientific interests revolve around the investigation of genetic polymorfisms, genetic variability in viral strains and the in silico drug design of novel antiviral and anticancer agents. To date, Dr. Vlachakis has published more than 90 original research articles in international peer-reviewed journals with impact factor, 100+ articles in international conference proceedings, 5 monograph ISBN books, 2 scientific patents and has been on the receiving end of numerous grants and awards. Since 2012 Dr. Vlachakis has been serving as the Editor in Chief and Associate Editor of relevant international journals.

3books edited

5chapters authored

Latest work with IntechOpen by Dimitrios Vlachakis

Systems biology is the inevitable outcome of long years of knowledge acquisition and data accumulation. The aim of systems biology is to integrate in a seamless way all existing knowledge in interconnected disciplines, stretching from modern biomedical research to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The main integration tool of such complex biomedical systems is via computational and mathematical modeling. In this direction, a series of state-of-the-art computer science techniques are used, namely, data mining and fusion, machine learning, and deep learning all under the prism of big data. All in all, systems biology is at the arrowhead of modern and state-of-the-art biomedical research by attempting to address key biological questions describing holistically complex biological systems.

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Systems Biology

Edited by Dimitrios Vlachakis

Books edited

By Arianna Filntisi, Dimitrios Vlachakis and George K. Matsopoulos

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have emerged as a promising class of targeted anticancer therapy, and it is distinguished from traditional chemotherapeutic approaches by its potential to kill cancer cells with limited side effects. Site-specific conjugation is one of the current challenges in ADC development because it allows for controlled conjugation and production of homogeneous ADCs. This chapter describes a computational method for the generation of antibody-drug conjugates as PDB files through site-specific cysteine conjugation, given the PDB files of a drug, a linker, and an antibody. The drug and linker are reconfigured using the rotation and translation functions of an affine transformation, which is brought in appropriate positions for the bonds to occur between the three molecules. The hydrogen and disulfide bonds are employed to connect the linker and drug as well as the linker with the antibody, respectively. Examples of conjugates produced with the presented method have been demonstrated.

Part of the book: Bioinformatics

Genetic and Geo-Epidemiological Analysis of the Zika Virus Pandemic; Learning Lessons from the Recent Ebola Outbreak

By Dimitrios Vlachakis, Louis Papageorgiou and Vasileios Megalooikonomou

“Outbreak” is a term referring to a virus or a parasite that is transmitted very aggressively and therefore could potentially cause fatalities, as the recent Ebola and Zika epidemics did. Nevertheless, looking back through history, quite a few outbreaks have been reported, which turned out so deadly that essentially changed, molded and literally re-shaped the society as it is today. In the present chapter, differences and similarities between the two most recent outbreaks have been studied, in order to pinpoint and design a trace model that will allow us to draw some conclusions for the connection of those two epidemics. Due to the high dimensionality of the problem, modern and state of the art geo-epidemiological methods have been used in an effort to provide the means necessary to establish the abovementioned model. It is only through geo-epidemiological analysis that it is possible to analyze concurrently a multitude of variables, such as genetic, environmental, behavioral, socioeconomic and a series of related infection risk factors.

Part of the book: Current Topics in Zika

Introductory Chapter: Molecular Docking - Overview, Background, Application and What the Future Holds

By Dimitrios Vlachakis

Part of the book: Molecular Docking

Introductory Chapter: Gene Profiling in Cancer in the Era of Metagenomics and Precision Medicine

By Katerina Pierouli, Thanasis Mitsis, Eleni Papakonstantinou and Dimitrios Vlachakis

Part of the book: Gene Expression Profiling in Cancer

Introductory Chapter: Systems Biology Consolidating State of the Art Genetics and Bioinformatics

By Eleni Papakonstantinou, Katerina Pierouli, Elias Eliopoulos and Dimitrios Vlachakis

Part of the book: Systems Biology

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