Seminar: Open Source Drug and Catalyst Discovery

Open Source Drug and Catalyst Discovery

Dr +Matthew Todd  School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney; @mattoddchem

September 12, 2013 at 10:15 in Aud 5 HCØ, University of Copenhagen

Science today is typically practiced by groups working in isolation, frequently with barriers to the sharing of data that arise from our need to protect intellectual property. Papers frequently do not disclose negative results, and the danger of being “scooped” often arises because we are unaware of what others are doing.

The open source software community works in a very different way, sharing data and ideas freely as part of highly distributed meritocratic projects where anyone can participate. In the last few years we have successfully applied these principles to the practice of experimental organic chemistry.1 We showed that the discovery of a method for the preparation of an important, enantiopure drug was accelerated by the project being completely open.2 We have since started the world’s first open source drug discovery project for the treatment of malaria that has already identified highly promising picomolar leads in whole-cell assays.3 Beyond drug synthesis and discovery, our laboratory has started several projects in basic organic synthetic methodology and catalyst discovery, acting as seeds for the contributions of diverse chemists from academia and industry.4

1 Open Science is a Research Accelerator, M. Woelfle, P. Olliaro and M. H. Todd, Nature Chemistry 2011, 3, 745-748.
2 Resolution of Praziquantel, M. Woelfle, J.-P. Seerden, J. de Gooijer, K. Pouwer, P. Olliaro and M. H. Todd, PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 2011, 5(9): e1260.
3 http://opensourcemalaria.org

4 For example http://115.146.85.229/ 

Seminar: Protein folding on the ribosome

Protein folding on the ribosome

Dr. John Christodoulou, University College London

Biocenter seminar room (1-2-03) at 15:00

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Recent publications from Dr. Christodoulou include:

Solution-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Protein Folding
Cabrita, L.D., Waudby, C.A., Dobson, C.M., Christodoulou, J.
Methods in Molecular Biology (2011) 752, 97-120

GPU accelerated Monte Carlo simulation of pulsed-field gradient NMR experiments
Waudby, C. A., Christodoulou, J.
Journal of Magnetic Resonance (2011) 211, pp 67-73

New Scenarios of Protein Folding Can Occur on the Ribosome
O’Brien, E.P., Christodoulou, J., Vendruscolo, M., Dobson, C.M.
Journal of the American Chemical Society (2011) 133, pp 513–526

Protein folding on the ribosome
Cabrita, L. D., Dobson, C. M. & Christodoulou, J.
Current Opinion in Structural Biology (2010) 20, pp 33–45

Probing ribosome-nascent chain complexes produced in vivo by NMR spectroscopy
Cabrita, L. D., Hsu, S.-T. D., Launay, H., Dobson, C. M. and Christodoulou, J.
PNAS (2009) 106 pp 22239–22244

You can read more about Dr. Christodoulou's research on his website: http://jcgroup.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/people/john/.

Seminar by Andrea Cavalli: The Resolution and Dynamics of NMR Structures

Andrea Cavalli from the University of Cambridge will be giving a seminar on Monday Jan 16th at 10:00AM entitled

The Resolution and Dynamics of NMR Structures

The seminar will take place in room 1.2.03 at the Biocenter.

Andrea was the first to demonstrate that one can determine structures of proteins from NMR chemical shift data alone. He will talk about this work, as well as more recent work on the structure and dynamics of proteins.

COMS Seminar Calendar

A COMS Seminar Calendar has been created. You can add it to your favorite calendar program by using the link. This will be maintained by Casper Steinmann.

For detailed information, look at the appropriate page about the COMS Seminars on the COMS homepage.