SNF Spark grant for postdoctoral researcher Asli Azizoglu
G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCR) are cell-surface receptors that detect molecules outside the cell and activate cellular responses. They regulate a large variety of pathophysiological processes and are therefore the target of extensive drug discovery efforts. In her Spark-funded project from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Asli Azizoglu from the Computational Systems Biology group will develop a technology platform that identifies very efficiently functional drugs that target GPCRs.
SNF awards Spark grants to postdocs for pursuing unconventional research ideas and innovative approaches that call for risk taking and rapid funding. Congratulations, Asli!
While one third of all FDA approved drugs target GPCRs or modulate their signalling, more than half of known non-olfactory GPCRs are still unexplored drug targets. One chief difficulty is that current methods of finding drugs that can target these receptors to change their behaviour is a time-consuming and expensive process with a high failure rate. This SPARK funded project will aim to develop a targeted evolution platform in Sacharomyces cerevisiae that can find functional drugs that target GPCRs with much higher efficiency. The goal will be to engineer yeast to continuously and autonomously evolve a large library of proteins, while simultaneously assessing them for their effect on the target GPCR.
Find information on the external pageSNF Spark Grant; further information on the D-BSSE Computational Systems Biology group led by Jörg Stelling.
Note that Master thesis projects are available within the scope of this project.