High Throughput Technologies in Structural Biology and Applications Towards Genomes, Pathways, and Drug Design

During the past few years, progress has been made in developing high throughput technologies for protein cloning, expression, purification, crystallization, crystal imaging, and synchrotron beamline data collection. Recently, we have been able to miniaturize and parrallelize the structural biology processes significantly using nanoliter volume technologies. Accordingly, significantly smaller amounts of materials can be used at all steps, and more parallel experiments can be engineered (genetic and mechanical) within the same space and time constraints. A description of these technology developments and the current status of throughput will be described. Applications of the technologies towards genomes, pathways, and drug discovery will be included.

Presenter(s)

Dr. Raymond Stevens is a Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and consults part-time for several biotech companies in the area of structural biology and structure-based drug design. Prior to joining Scripps in 1999, Dr. Stevens was Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Stevens has published over 100 papers and earned nine patents. Dr. Stevens has also received numerous awards in the area of structural biology, including the Sidhu Award (1992), the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award (1994), and the Beckman Foundation's Young Investigator Award (1994). Dr. Stevens obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry with Robert Bau and George Olah (Nobel Prize, 1994) at the University of Southern California and conducted his post-doctoral research in structural biology with Professor William Lipscomb (Nobel Prize, 1976) at Harvard University. In 1999, Dr. Stevens co-founded Syrrx, a high throughput structure based drug design company located in La Jolla with more than 130 employees and over $100M in venture funding.