Presentation

Efforts of the member of Laboratory of structural biological chemistry (CBS) can be grouped in two main research axis: (i) the structural study of host-guest systems and (therapeutical) cocrystals and (ii) protein crystallography and structure-based drug design.

(i) Small molecule crystallography – host-guest systems and cocrystals.

Within the context of drug design, the CBS lab is investigating the intermolecular interactions phenomena associated with host-guest systems, drug-receptor recognition and cocrystallization. Members of the CBS lab rely heavily on crystallography to study polymorphism and cocrystallization of pharmaceutical compounds. Part of these investigations also include numerical simulations performed in collaboration with the LCT laboratory and require the use of high-performance computing infrastructures, available through the Plateforme Technologique en Calcul Intensif (PTCI) of UNamur.

The crystallographic equipment is now part of the Plateforme de Caractérisation Physico-chimique (PC2) (http://platforms.unamur.be/platforms/pc2).

Ongoing research topics demonstrate the know-how of the group in terms of preparation of materials and their experimental physicochemical characterizations. This includes the crystallographic study of novel cocrystals of pharmaceutical compounds or chromic solids, and the structural characterization of supramolecular host-guest systems.

(ii) Protein crystallography – structure-based drug design.

The CBS lab is also engaged in structural biology project. These projects are conducted in close collaboration within the NARILIS research institute (https://www.narilis.be/). In this context, researchers of the lab do produce, purify and characterize (enzymology, calorimetric analysis) enzymes of pharmaceutical interest. Efforts are made to crystallize and solve structures of the target enzyme to support structure based drug design and facilitate drug design projects. This work is conducted within the NAMEDIC research centre (http://www.namedic.be/).