Research Lectures at Nobel Forum
February 14, 16.30, 2019
Fiona Marshall
Merck´s Early Drug Discovery Center, London, UK
Venue: Nobel Forum, Nobels väg 1
Host: Gunter Schneider
25 years in G protein-coupled receptor drug discovery – a personal history
Drugs directed at GPCRs have been used for over 7000 years. However only recently have we started to understand the molecular basis of the interaction of these drugs with their receptors. Many of today’s drugs arose from studies in the 1950s based on tissue based assays. The first revolution came in the era of molecular biology and genome sequencing which revealed that GPCRs were part of a large related superfamily of receptors. This lead to attempts to clone and de-orphan novel receptors. The second and more recent revolution is that of structural biology and the ability to solve X-ray and cryo-EM structures of GPCRs. The impact of these technology revolutions on our ability to discovery new drugs directed at GPCRs will be discussed.