Structural Biology

Molecular pharmacology requires structural information on all length and time scales. Contributions of NMR spectroscopy typically include high-resolution structural investigations on target systems, studies of their interactions with drug-like molecules, and imaging at the level of organisms.

As a spectroscopic technique, NMR serves ‘metabolomics’ studies and investigations on the effects of dynamics in biological processes. Future pharmacology-oriented structural studies are expected to provide information on how super-molecular arrangements assemble and disassemble within the cell, and how these processes are controlled in vivo by protein expression, degradation, post-translational modification as well as through the application of small-molecule or protein-based drugs. The dynamic nature of these phenomena demands the application of NMR, exploiting its triple capabilities of structure determination, spectroscopy, and imaging. Integrating these and other biophysical data with molecular modelling and cheminformatics methods is essential for deriving a comprehensive picture of pharmacological processes as a basis for ligand design.