Accelerating Drug Design for Intractable Targets

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Before attending the live Q&A, we invite you to watch the following on-demand recordings at your leisure. They feature thought-provoking presentations by keynote speakers, including professor Patrick Sexton from Monash University, Dr. Corey Strickland from Merck, Dr. Kenneth Borelli from Schrödinger, and Dr. Lionel Rougé from Genentech.

Cryo-EM in Drug Discovery: Accelerating Drug Design for Intractable Targets
Dr. Jeffrey Lengyel, Thermo Fisher Scientific

A short background on where Thermo Fisher Scientific stands with cryo-EM.

From concept to reality: Cryo-EM as an integral part of drug discovery and development
Dr. Corey Strickland, Merck

Cryo-EM has become an integral part of drug discovery and development. It is a powerful tool for structure-based design on complex targets and direct imaging for vaccines and drug formulations. In this presentation, Dr. Corey Strickland shows how cryo-EM was built from the ground up within a large pharmaceutical company and shares his experience from developing the business case, through the construction and installation, up to the current state.

Structural characterization of different trpa1 inhibitors
Dr. Lionel Rougé, Genentech

Mammalian transient receptor potential (TRP) channels control cell homeostasis by mediating Ca2+ across membranes in response to physical and chemical environmental stimuli. TRPA1 has been a target of interest for the pharmaceutical industry for its implication in pain and neurogenic inflammation. For optimization of these molecules a robust system was developed.

Improving protein-ligand modeling into cryo-EM data and the use of those models in drug discovery efforts
Dr. Kenneth Borelli, Schrödinger

Producing an accurate atomic model of protein-ligand interactions from the data generated by cryo-electron microscopy is often a challenging problem due to a combination of the noise in the experiment and the dynamic nature of protein-ligand binding. In order to address this problem, we have developed ways to combine established computational modeling techniques with EM map potentials and incorporated them into a pipeline for cryo-EM enabled structure-based drug design which can be completed in a few months.

Using cryo-EM for GPCR drug discovery and development
Professor Patrick Sexton, Monash University

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) comprise the largest family of cell surface receptors and are a major class of therapeutic drug targets. Recent advances in single particle cryo-EM have enabled resolutions of 2.5 Å and below to be routinely achieved for well-behaved complexes enabling accurate ligand poses and elaboration of key water networks.