TBDO Sessions Richard J Law

10/06/201510:00R_473.10_AULATBDO SessionsRichard J LawEVOTEC"Structure based drug design guided by fragment screening & computational chemistry".Host: Tórtola Pérez, SilviaAbstract:Fragment based drug design has emerged as an effective alternative to high throughput screening for the identification of lead compounds in drug discovery in the past years. Screening of low molecular weight weak binders (“fragments”), and obtaining hits is a well understood process that can be achieved by many different assay techniques. Less well defined is how to proceed once a hit is obtained. Computational chemistry, and the application of multiple techniques, plays a vital role in understanding and ranking the many potential routes for fragment expansion design.

Dr Law will introduce us to the field of rational drug design with a focus on fragment based drug design. He will demonstrate the application of the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method as a novel computational methodology and its use in structure-based drug design to guide medicinal chemistry. As well as using FMO to prioritize fragment hits for expansion and rank docking results, it can also be used to perform virtual fragment expansion to help guide subsequent rounds of fragment-to-lead chemistry.

Evotec is a global leading company providing integrated drug discovery solutions, covering all activities from target-to-clinic.

Brief Biography:

Degree in Biochemistry – University of Oxford
PhD studies (in Molecular Biophysics/computational chemistry) in Mark Sansom's group at the University of Oxford
Postdoctoral fellowship in computational chemistry with Andrew McCammon at the University of California, San Diego
Senior Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (working with several US biotechs and government labs)
Group leader of computational chemistry at Evotec.
Executive MBA - Imperial College, London
Vice President of Business Development at Evotec
Member of the Board of Directors of OpenEye (comp chem software company)