Protein Crystallography and Cryo-EM Discovery

Our 3 focus areas

1. Protein crystallography infrastructure, access and discovery support

 The SRF manages a state-of-the art crystallography facility optimized for high-throughput and non-expert crystallization and structure solution. The experimental facilities and workflows are configured as a walk-in service, to maximally streamline use by CMD staff, visiting scientists and collaborators with minimal training.  In addition, our standard practice for crystallography aligns with the best practice for XChem fragment screening, ideally positioning us to drive discovery projects in the structure-based discovery field.

2. Cryo-EM:  discovery expertise and support

The direction of travel for structure-based discovery increasingly includes the incorporation of Cryo-EM, for a variety of reasons, with best-practice workflows still being established across biopharma. To stay competitive and relevant we have embedded expertise for discovery-focused Cryo-EM into the SRF. Importantly, we use  the Cryo-EM instrumentation provided by the OPIC-SRF.

3. Technology and AI in discovery

 This focus area includes both early development of leading-edge technologies and approaches, and crucially deployment into definable platforms, that add value and credibility to users’ funding proposals, and transformative efficiency to their funded science.  (Exemplars are the ASAP and PROTECT awards.) 

Current platforms and developments

• As part of the Openbind consortium we will exploit our capacity for data generation by leveraging our parallel protein production capabilities and high-throughput crystallography to generate data that will be used to train and improve AI-driven tools for predicting protein-ligand binding affinities.
• Low-cost bag-based protein production to enable to explore various constructs in parallel for crystallographic experiments.
• Cryo-EM display technology to enable high-throughput Cryo-EM data collection with Gluebodies or Crysalins mediators 
• Co-develop the Fast Forward Fragments platform (FFF) to rapidly progress hits obtained in the XChem screens to compounds suitable for drug discovery campaigns.