DC1: Streamline Binding Studies

Utrecht University (UU) – Netherlands, Department of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery

Roland Pieters r.j.pieters@uu.nl

Determining binding affinities of the new generation of carbohydrate binding molecules (CBMs) is an important aspect of their development.  Creating potent and selective CBMs is the goal that should be easily and accurately be determined. Various techniques are to be used, such as NMR, ITC and spectroscopic techniques, that we aim to automate and make higher throughput, such as UV, fluorescence and CD, and also our developed electrochemical method using a sensor.  However selectivity can be more efficiently addressed by a microarray, displaying many carbohydrate target structures, that may or may not bind to certain fluorescently labelled CBMs. The screen will be followed up with molecular modeling, with  quantification with above mentioned techniques, and determination of the structure of the formed complexes by NMR.

Information about the related PhD position and how to apply are available here.