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.
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