Scientific Programmes
Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme
Overview Last update May/2010
The main objective of the Programme is to expand our understanding of cancer related processes combining computational and structural methods.
Our three main research lines can be summarised as follows:
- Understand the structural basis of cell cycle related complexes – particularly those related to protein kinases
- Develop computational methods for the analysis of cancer genome studies, particularly those applying to advances in Next Generation Sequencing
- Contribute to the study of complex cancer related processes through the application of structural and computational methods
The Structural side of our Programme has recently recruited Daniel Lietha as Junior Group Leader to study cell adhesion complexes. An additional Group will join the Programme at the end of 2009.
The Computational part of the Programme has stepped up its activity with the recruitment of Francesco Gervasio’s Group working on protein dynamics and ligand binding aspects through computational biophysics technology and its application to protein kinases.
Highlights of the year include the proposal for new mechanisms for the interaction of Ras with its main effectors (TIBS, 2009), a new proposal for the use of docking methods to detect potential protein interactions, and the resolution of the structure of a large one MDalton complex essential for microtubule growth.
The Programme has finalised research agreements with Cellectis to study the use of Homing Endonucleases to promote targeted gene correction in human diseases, with Sanofi -Aventis for the study of ligand binding to protein kinases, and with the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative to study genome-based drug toxicology.
Finally, the Programme has organised several CNIO meetings including a CNIO Cancer Conference (CCC) on Canceromatics and the BioCreative II.5 text mining challenge.
