Publications related to Developing the Biomolecular Screening Facility at the EPFL into the Chemical Biology Screening Platform for Switzerland

Improved microfluidic transcriptome based screening methods

Christoph Merten, Leonie Kolmar, Xiaoli Ma, Hongxing Hu

The invention provides microfluidic screening systems for the identification of compounds or compositions influencing cellular transcriptomes. The invention is predicated upon taking into account differences in newly synthesized mRNA in contrast to so call ...

2024

Methods for high-throughput synthesis and screening of peptide libraries

Zsolt Bognár

Macrocycles provide an attractive modality for drug development but the identification of ligands to targets of interest is hindered by the lack of large macrocyclic compound libraries for high-throughput screening. A strategy to efficiently synthesize lar ...

EPFL2024

Drug Screening in C. elegans to identify new pharmacological mitochondrial stress inducers

Amélia Lalou

Mitochondria are essential organelles participating in numerous cellular functions, including energy harvesting, regulation of homeostasis and apoptosis. Changes in mitochondrial number, morphology, and function not only impact cellular metabolism but also ...

EPFL2024

Solid-phase peptide synthesis in 384-well plates

Christian Heinis, Gontran Sangouard, Mischa Schüttel, Sevan Mleh Habeshian, Edward Jeffrey Will, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda

Newer solid-phase peptide synthesis and release strategies enable the production of short peptides with high purity, allowing direct screening for desired bioactivity without prior chromatographic purification. However, the maximum number of peptides that ...

2024

Deconvolution of ex-vivo drug screening data and bulk tissue expression predicts the abundance and viability of cancer cell subpopulations

Alexandre Coudray

Ex-vivo drug sensitivity screening (DSS) allows the prediction of cancer treatment effectiveness in a personalized fashion. However, it only provides a readout on mixtures of cells, potentially occulting important information on clinically relevant cell su ...

EPFL2023

Decoding Chromatin Ubiquitylation: A Chemical Biology Perspective

Beat Fierz, Pauline Franz

Since Strahl and Allis proposed the "language of covalent histone modifications", a host of experimental studies have shed light on the different facets of chromatin regulation by epigenetic mechanisms. Initially proposed as a concept for controlling gene ...

Academic Press Ltd- Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Optimality principles for the analysis of biological processes across scales: From enzyme kinetics to microbiome dynamics

Asli Sahin

Microorganisms are essential for life on Earth, performing key roles in numerous biological processes. Their influence extends across a wide spectrum, from human health and ecological balance to advancements in biotechnology and industrial applications. Th ...

EPFL2024

Targeting TDP-43 Proteinopathies in Neurodegeneration by its Native-State Stabilization

Lixin Yang

Preventing the misfolding or aggregation of TDP-43 is the most actively pursued disease-modifying strategy to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases. In our work, we provide proof of concept that native state stabili ...

EPFL2024

Prolamins' 3D structure: A new insight into protein modeling using the language of numbers and shapes

Niloufar Sharif

This study combined protein modeling methods to generate the prolamins' fractions as precise as possible. Hence, gliadins, zeins, kafirins, hordeins, secalins, avenins and oryzins were generated based on their characteristics and disulfide mapping. Finding ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Augmenting large language models with chemistry tools

Philippe Schwaller, Oliver Tobias Schilter, Andres Camilo Marulanda Bran, Carlo Baldassari

Large language models (LLMs) have shown strong performance in tasks across domains but struggle with chemistry-related problems. These models also lack access to external knowledge sources, limiting their usefulness in scientific applications. We introduce ...

Nature Portfolio2024

A chemical biology approach to decipher chromatin ubiquitylation by RNF168

Pauline Franz

DNA damage signaling following DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) involves numerous regulating proteins, which dynamically recognize ('read') and alter ('write' or 'erase') histone post-translational modifications (PTMs). Among these PTMs, the ubiquitin syste ...

EPFL2024

Engineering novel protein interactions with therapeutic potential using deep learning-guided surface design

Anthony Marchand

Proteins are foundational biomolecules of life playing a crucial role in a myriad of biological processes. Their function often requires interplay with other biomolecules, including proteins themselves. Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are essential for ...

EPFL2024

Augmented Memory: Sample-Efficient Generative Molecular Design with Reinforcement Learning

Philippe Schwaller, Jeff Guo

Sample efficiency is a fundamental challenge in de novo molecular design. Ideally, molecular generative models should learn to satisfy a desired objective under minimal calls to oracles (computational property predictors). This problem becomes more apparen ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Computational drug development for membrane protein targets

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Pierre Vogel, Shuguang Yuan, Dongchun Ni, Babatunde Edukpe Ekundayo

The application of computational biology in drug development for membrane protein targets has experienced a boost from recent developments in deep learning-driven structure prediction, increased speed and resolution of structure elucidation, machine learni ...

2024

Stimulus-responsive assembly of nonviral nucleocapsids

Angela Steinauer

Controlled assembly of a protein shell around a viral genome is a key step in the life cycle of many viruses. Here we report a strategy for regulating the co-assembly of nonviral proteins and nucleic acids into highly ordered nucleocapsids in vitro. By fus ...

Nature Portfolio2024

From Sequence to Dynamics to Function: Computational Design of Allostery and Ligand Selectivity in G-Protein Coupled Receptors

Mahdi Hijazi

The phenomenon of allostery, a general property in proteins that has been heralded as "the second secret of life" remains elusive to our understanding and even more challenging to incorporate into protein design. One example of allosteric proteins with gre ...

EPFL2024

Reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale metabolic networks in single organisms and microbial communities

Evangelia Vagena

Microorganisms are a key component in the chain of life. They are essential for agriculture, produce a large proportion of oxygen, and play a central role in the cycle of elements. Microorganisms are widely used in the production of food and alcoholic beve ...

EPFL2024

A multi-reservoir extruder for time-resolved serial protein crystallography and compound screening at X-ray free-electron lasers

Camila Bacellar Cases Da Silveira, Christoph Bostedt

Serial crystallography at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) permits the determination of radiation-damage free static as well as time-resolved protein structures at room temperature. Efficient sample delivery is a key factor for such experiments. Here, we ...

Nature Portfolio2023

The predictive capacity of in vitro preclinical models to evaluate drugs for the treatment of retinoblastoma

Paul Joseph Dyson, Irina Sinenko, Roland Christopher Turnell-Ritson

Retinoblastoma is a rare childhood cancer of the eye. Of the small number of drugs are used to treat retinoblastoma, all have been repurposed from drugs developed for other conditions. In order to find drugs or drug combinations better suited to the improv ...

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Nanomole-scale photochemical thiol-ene chemistry for high-throughput late-stage diversification of peptide macrocycles

Mischa Schüttel, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Mark Daniel Nolan

The photochemical thiol-ene reaction is an efficient method for rapid and chemoselective formation of thioether linkages under mild conditions. It has found widespread use in small-molecule synthesis as well as peptide and protein chemistry. While high-thr ...

WILEY2023