Molecuar Pharmacolog and Toxicology
Description of Research Group
The research group is using a combination of experimental and theoretical methods to study molecular mechanisms of drug target interactions and hypersensivity reactions to marine biomolecules.
The projects in our group of relevance for BioCat are:
1. Structure, function and inhibition of bacterial and human zinc metalloproteinases .
2. Molecular mechanism involved in hypersensivity to marine biomolecules.
The aim of that project is to identify inhibitors of bacterial virulence factors that not interact with human zinc metalloproteinases. A combination of enzyme kinetic studies and theoretical calculations is used in the studies.
Technology, expertise and equipment
The main expertise of the research group connected to the activities in BioCat is molecular modelling and theoretical calculations. Homology modeling is used to construct 3D models pf proteins of unknown structure, while docking and different molecular dynamics based methods are used to predict protein-ligand affinities.
Ligand-based and structure based virtual screening methods are used to identify new compounds interacting with different drug targets.