Date: 27 January 2026
Time: 15:00 CET
Abstract
Molecular visualization is a critical task usually performed by structural biologists and bioinformaticians to aid three processes that are essential in science and fundamental to understand structural molecular biology: synthesis, analysis and communication.
Here we present VTX, a new molecular visualization software [1] that includes a real-time high-performance molecular graphics engine dedicated to the visualization of the structure and dynamics of massive molecular systems [2]. It is capable to process most molecular structures and trajectories file formats. VTX integrates innovative representations, fully customizable and usable interfaces, python bindings, and different tools and interfaces for molecular simulation. VTX constitutes the basis of the next generation integrative molecular modeling platform. VTX is open-source (source available at https://github.com/VTX-Molecular-Visualization/VTX) and free for non-commercial use (builds available at http://vtx.drugdesign.fr)
[1] Maria M, Guionnière S, Dacquay N, Guillaume V, Plateau-Holleville C, Larroque V, Larde J, Naimi Y, Piquemal JP, Levieux G, Lagarde N, Merillou S, Montes M.VTX: Real time high performance molecular structure and visualization software. Bioinformatics (2025);41(6):btaf295 [2] Maria M, Guillaume V, Guionnière S, Dacquay N, Plateau-Holleville C, Larroque V, Larde J, Naimi Y, Piquemal JP, Levieux G, Lagarde N, Merillou S, Montes M. Interactive Visualization of large molecular systems with VTX: example with a minimal whole-cell model. Front Bioinform (2025);5:1588661
Presenter
Matthieu Montes (PR at CNAM detached to CNRS) is an ERC fellow(2015-21 and 2022-23) and senior member of the IUF (2023-2025) with expertise on Interactive Molecular Visualization and Simulation, Drug Discovery and design and computational geometry. He is the head of the molecular modeling and drug discovery team of the Computational Quantitative and Synthetic Biology unit (CQSB) UMR7238, CNRS/Sorbonne Université. His team developed key benchmarking datasets for nuclear-receptor ligand discovery (NRLiST and NR-DBIND, including negative binding data). He introduced the “predictiveness curves” framework to assess the quality and robustness of in silico screening campaigns, bridging statistical learning with cheminformatics. Prof. Montes is co-creator of the interactive real-time molecular docking software UDock, and the high-performance molecular-visualization and simulation platform VTX, enabling rapid exploration of massive molecular systems (up to billion atoms). He is the co-founder of Qubit Pharmaceuticals SAS. Prof. Montes has co-authored over 65 publications, 8 patents on therapeutic products in inflammation and cancer among which 1 vaccine candidate currently in clinical trials (orcid 0000-0001-5921-460X).
X: @MatthieuMontes
Bluesky: @matthieumontes.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthieu-montes-4603aa1a/
