Description

The Structural Biology and Biophysics platform provides crucial support in the development of potential small molecule-based drugs, therapeutic antibodies and recombinant protein-based vaccines. The platform is also fundamental for the study of molecular mechanisms at the atomic level, clarifying the structure/function relationships of proteins involved in pathological pathways. To achieve these goals, the platform is equipped with cutting-edge equipment that allows a multi-technique approach such as nuclear magnetic resonance, circular dichroism, calorimetry and interferometry. 

The Structural Biology and Biophysics platform supports several research projects in different therapeutic areas such as aging diseases, cancer, infectious diseases and biomedical applications. The diversity of all the ongoing research projects well represents the potential of Structural Biology, which can be applied to both basic research and translational science and can transversally support different research activities.

Expertise

• Production of recombinant proteins: from cloning to purification and characterization;
• Determination of the size, structure and stability of macromolecules;
• Structural, kinetic and thermodynamic studies of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions;
• BLI-based and NMR-based fragments screening;
• Development and application of analytical methods.

Facilities & Equipment

• Molecular biology laboratories for the production of recombinant proteins according to the most modern cloning, expression and purification techniques;
• Avance Neo 800 MHz NMR Spectrometer equipped with cryo-probe
• MicroCal PEAQ_ITC, Malvern
• Bio-Layer Interferometer Octet Red96e, fortèBIO
• Spectropolarimeter J-1500, JASCO
• Multi-mode high-performance Microplate Reader CLARIOstar Plus, BMG Labtech