Praktikum Drug Discovery Technologies

Goals:

Gaining basic knowledge and hands-on experience in the application of
(bio-)chemical, biophysical, and computational techniques for drug discovery

Content:

Students typically select one of 3 fields of research: (a) chemical biology / medicinal chemistry, (b) molecular biology & biophysics, (c) computational biology & in silico drug discovery.

Tasks in these fields are:

(a) synthesis and chemical characterization of tool compounds for studying biological processes; assay design & development utilizing such new compounds; studying structure-activity relationships in lead development and optimization for elucidating key protein-ligand interactions and their cooperativity;

(b) construction and expression of vectors for protein production; application of protein purification strategies; characterization of protein-ligand interactions with biophysical techniques including NMR, ITC, DSF, fluorescence polarization, etc.; implementation of compound screening strategies and use of automation for improving throughput;

(c) modeling chemistry and biology at different levels of theory (QM, sQM, MM); studying the dynamic behavior of proteins and protein-ligand interactions; computational structure-based drug design; application of virtual screening techniques including pharmacophores and (high-throughput) docking.

Frequency:

Once per year (seminar: during springterm; practical course: 3 weeks in August -October by individual arrangement must be scheduled at the start of each springterm

Participants:

Up to 6

Evaluation:

Audited protocol (~10 pages summary of research results + lab book) 50%
Oral presentation (~10 minutes) 50%