Cryo-cool method hot technique in drug discovery and development

The webinar on “Cryo-EM and drug discovery” hosted on June 8-9 by SciLifeLab researchers Marta Carroni (Stockholm University), Anders Olsson (KTH) and Per Arvidsson (Karolinska Institutet), was met with great interest by scientists. Speakers from the pharma industry, such as Merck, GSK, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Genentech and Evotec, as well as academia, in the forefront of structure-based drug design (SBDD), presented a number of findings made with the cryogenic electron microscopy technique.

“It was a unique gathering of presentations on this topic with all the most important companies involved. I believe that is why the event was so well received, it proved to be a nice way to showcase the impact that Cryo-EM has on drug discovery in industry and academia. This event also ignited a vivid collaboration between two SciLifeLab platforms, the Drug Discovery and Development Platform (DDD) and the Integrated Structural Biology Platform”, says Marta Carroni, head of the Cryo-EM national unit at SciLifeLab.

The Cryo-EM unit offers researchers access to state-of-the-art equipment and expertise in single particle cryo-EM, cryo-tomography (cryo-ET) and, since recently, also electron diffraction of protein nanocrystals. The aim is to provide an internationally competitive infrastructure that is accessible to scientists from Swedish academia and industry.

The SciLifeLab unit also offers a training environment where researchers can become familiar with cutting-edge methods in cryo-EM and an educational framework of scientific meetings, practical workshops and training courses to enhance the activity of the broad Swedish scientific community.

Further reading:
Cryo-EM Swedish Infrastructure Unit
Cryo-EM in Drug Discovery