MSc Itai Bloch

MSc Itai Bloch
Research Group Leader
Phone
97247700512

As of today the focus of pharmaceutical research is limited to a small fraction of the therapeutic target space. Among the major difficulties dealing with “non-standard” drug targets are:

1) The absence of important structural information required for understanding the mechanism of action of the drug target.
2) Efficient sampling of the chemical space for potential new small-molecule drug candidates.
3) The complexity in directly monitoring protein-protein or protein-small molecule interactions in-vitro.
Indeed, as the amount of investments increase the number of approved drugs declines suggesting for the need to improve and bring new research technologies.
Currently, there is no single method capable of dealing with these complications that is both robust and reliable. Using two complimentary state-of-the-art techniques, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy together with unique modelling and prediction algorithms, we can overcome the above mentioned hurdles. Thus, offering new exciting opportunity to explore and understand better important pharmaceutical targets.
Our research is focused on developing new techniques and methods for computer-aided drug discovery. Cheminformatics and Efficient chemical space sampling. Protein-protein interaction inhibitors. Incorporating NMR-derived data into the in-silico drug discovery and optimization process.

CV

Education
M.Sc. 2006, Chemistry, department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Academic and research positions

2012– Principal Investigator, Migal research center, Kyriat Shmona, Israel
2009–2012 Dynamix Pharmaceuticals, Senior Scientist – Computational Chemist
2007–2009 Epix Pharmaceuticals, Research and Development Scientist – Computational Drug Discovery

Scientific Publications

Algorithmically-guided discovery of viral epitopes via linguistic parsing: Problem formulation and solving by soft computing

Shir, O.M., Israeli, A., Caftory, A., Zepko, G., Bloch, I.
Applied Soft Computing, Volume 129 (2022) 109509
2022

Efficient Isothermal Titration Calorimetry Technique Identifies Direct Interaction of Small Molecule Inhibitors with the Target Protein.

Gal, M., Bloch I., Shechter, N., Romanenko, O., Shir, O.M.
Comb Chem High Throughput Screen 2016 Volume 19 Issue 1 Pages 4-13
2016

Specificity in transmembrane helix-helix interactions mediated by aromatic residues

Sal-Man N, Gerber D, Bloch I, Shai Y.
J Biol Chem. 2007
2007

T-Cell inactivation and immunosuppressive activity induced by HIV gp41 via novel interacting motif

Bloch I, Quintana FJ, Gerber D, Cohen T, Cohen IR, Shai Y.
FASEB J. 2006
2006

Molecular flexibility in ab initio drug docking to DNA: binding-site and binding-mode transitions in all-atom Monte Carlo simulations

Rohs R, Bloch I, Sklenar H, Shakked Z.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2005 Volume 33 Issue 22 Pages 7048-57
2005

D-enantiomer peptide of the TCRalpha transmembrane domain inhibits T-cell activation in vitro and in vivo

Gerber D, Quintana FJ, Bloch I, Cohen IR, Shai Y.
FASEB J. 2005 Volume 19 Issue 9 Pages 1190-2
2005