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Volume 10, Issue 8 (Suppl)

J Proteomics Bioinform, an open access journal

ISSN: 0974-276X

Structural Biology 2017

September 18-20, 2017

International Conference on

Structural Biology

September 18-20, 2017 Zurich, Switzerland

Marta Westwood, J Proteomics Bioinform 2017, 10:8(Suppl)

DOI: 10.4172/0974-276X-C1-0100

Antibodies as research tools to find new chemical matter

Marta Westwood

UCB Celltech, UK

rotein-protein interactions (PPIs) are of critical importance in most of biological cellular processes including DNA repair,

immune, and allergic responses. Despite their therapeutic relevance, PPIs are intrinsically challenging targets due to

complexity of interactions, assay tractability and the lack of well-defined binding pockets at the interacting surfaces. In the

quest for small molecule drug candidates targeting PPIs, there have been many different approaches adopted, which include:

use of existing lead or drugs, natural products, high-throughput screening and more recently established powerful fragment-

based drug discovery. At UCB we have integrated the fragment-based methodology with biological and structural information

obtained from antibody-validated protein targets, to develop specific small molecule inhibitors of PPIs. An ensemble of

biophysical methods (i.e. SPR, ITC, FRET, MS and ligand-based NMR), corroborated by functional data, were employed to

identify and validate fragment hits that constituted the starting point for our PPI inhibitor drug discovery programs. We have

also employed antibodies as research tools to hold target proteins in biologically active conformations, aiding the discovery

of new small molecules for challenging targets. By holding the target protein in biologically relevant conformations, new sites

(in particular allosteric sites), which would otherwise be inaccessible, may become available for binding. The ability to capture

the target protein in a specific conformation with high affinity for a significantly long time opens the possibility for a small-

fragment molecule screening.

Biography

Marta Westwood has obtained his PhD in Nano-materials from Cranfield University in 2007. In 2011, he has joined Structural Biology group led by Alaistair Lawson

at UCB. For the past five years, he has been developing expertise in small molecule drug discovery using a fragment based approach. He has also been involved

in the assay development for a novel antibody-enable drug discovery approach. Prior to joining UCB, he was awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Institute

of Food Research in Norwich to study the mono and multilayer films used to encapsulate active ingredients for a controlled and site-specific delivery within the GIT.

During his time at IFR he has worked on numerous projects including a commercial project for Pfizer focused on AFM imaging of proteins and polysaccharides

constituting vaccines.

marta.westwood@ucb.com