Structural Bioinformatics Group

Practical Course (Praxismodul)

Current Questions in Structural Bioinformatics (Methods in Drug Development - Practical Course)

This course will take place in the semester break (27.03.2024 - 05.04.2024), 8 days during 2 weeks, daily 2 pm - 5 pm

Preliminary meeting:

  • Date: will be announced
  • Time: 11.00 am
  • Place: Campus Mitte, Philippstr. 12, 10115 Berlin; Anatomy building (Waldeyer Haus)
  • Seminar room: 03 001 (3rd floor)

Course overview:

The Structural Bioinformatics Group offers a broad and comprehensive set of lectures in the areas of structural bioinformatics and drug design. The course begins with a general introduction of the drug design pipeline and an introductory course on the structural bioinformatics research field. These lead on to more specialized topics, amongst others in chemo-informatics, molecular docking, homology modeling and more detailed aspects of toxicity prediction models. The practical course gives the student a chance to test his or her understanding of the material taught in the theory course. A short introduction on each topic will be given on this course for individual topics. The students will be assigned to a small project/task which they have to perform. The students will be assigned into groups of two/three/max four members, depending on the total number of students registered for the course.

Course structure:

Everyday students will be assigned projects in groups for each topic. They work together to solve some interesting scientific problem. Each group will be closely supervised by the respective tutors. At the end of the lecture series, students (individual group) will be assigned one of the topic of the course, which they have to present in front of the wider audience. This will provide students, a way to practice presentation skills and can help them to develop the expertise needed to discuss their research in a clear and meaningful way.

Topics of the course:

  1. Introduction
  2. Chemical Similarity
  3. 3D Similarity
  4. Molecular Docking
  5. Natural products and drug design
  6. Predictive Toxicology
  7. Drug Repurposing

Important: Material from the theory course will be intensively used in the practical course. It is advisable, that the students need to attend the theory course before participating in the practical course. Both the courses are interlinked.