Speaker: Brian Bender

Title: Structure-Based Drug Design for Structurally Unresolved GPCRs

Abstract: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest family of membrane proteins and remain attractive drug targets. Experimental structures of GPCRs are changing our understanding of the signalling of these proteins and provide new opportunities for rational drug design. Despite the increase in structural availability, not all receptors have resolved structures and miss out on the advantages of structure-based drug discovery. In this talk, there will be presented the challenges in predicting GPCR structures and method development to increase the accuracy of models. This improvement in accuracy allows these models to be used in prospective virtual screening, a field revolutionized by the advent of large combinational libraries. The combination of improved structure prediction for GPCRs and development of make-on-demand libraries has now increased the possibility for structure-based hit identification of structurally unresolved targets. This has recently been shown for the cases of NPFF1R and PAR4 and will be highlighted in the talk.

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