Dr. Paramjit Arora, New York University

November 19, 2014
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
C-121

“Plucking the High Hanging Fruit: A Systematic Approach for Targeting Protein Interfaces”

Abstract: Development of specific ligands for protein targets that help decode the complexities of protein-protein interaction networks is a key goal for the field of chemical biology. Despite the emergence of powerful in silico and experimental high-throughput screening strategies, the discovery of synthetic ligands that selectively modulate protein-protein interactions remains a challenge for synthetic chemists. Proteins often utilize small folded domains for recognition of other biomolecules.  The basic hypothesis guiding our research is that by mimicking these domains we can modulate the function of a particular protein with metabolically stable synthetic molecules. This presentation will discuss computational and synthetic methods to develop protein domain mimics (PDMs) as modulators of intracellular protein-protein interactions.