Membrane proteins are high priority drug targets in the pharmaceutical industry, but remain very challenging to work with. A primary goal of Protein Sciences at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) is to enable drug discovery on various classes of membrane proteins, including ion channels, GPCRs and solute carriers. We generate protein reagents for high-throughput screening, biophysical assays and structure based drug design. In my talk, I will give a brief overview of Protein Sciences at NIBR and share key examples of recent technical advances, which had a significant impact on drug discovery projects for membrane proteins. These examples will include protein expression, AI-based construct design and structure determination efforts by X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM.
