Professor Rod Hubbard, York Structural Biology Lab (YSLB), University of York & Vernalis (R&D), Cambridge
Tuesday 4th October, 4.00 p.m., Stacey Lecture Theatre 1
Over the past 20 years, I have been involved in an increasing number of projects which have at their heart the binding of small chemical fragments to proteins. The research includes development of new computational and experimental methods but importantly the use of these approaches in drug discovery and chemical biology.
In this talk, I will provide a very brief history of how these methods emerged and give a summary of the current practise in fragment based ligand discovery. The bulk of the talk will be on applications. I will use some examples to illustrate the effect fragments have had on modern drug discovery and then discuss the use of the approach in a more academic setting. This will include examples of how fragment screening can indicate interesting features of protein systems and some very recent work in activating enzyme activity – with potential application in industrial biotechnology.