Publications related to Small Molecule Based Approaches to Inhibit Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF) Activities and Elucidate its Role in Health and Disease

Improved microfluidic transcriptome based screening methods

Christoph Merten, Leonie Kolmar, Xiaoli Ma, Hongxing Hu

The invention provides microfluidic screening systems for the identification of compounds or compositions influencing cellular transcriptomes. The invention is predicated upon taking into account differences in newly synthesized mRNA in contrast to so call ...

2024

A common NFKB1 variant detected through antibody analysis in UK Biobank predicts risk of infection and allergy

Jacques Fellay, Flavia Aurelia Shoko Hodel

Infectious agents contribute significantly to the global burden of diseases through both acute infection and their chronic sequelae. We leveraged the UK Biobank to identify genetic loci that influence humoral immune response to multiple infections. From 45 ...

2024

From Sequence to Dynamics to Function: Computational Design of Allostery and Ligand Selectivity in G-Protein Coupled Receptors

Mahdi Hijazi

The phenomenon of allostery, a general property in proteins that has been heralded as "the second secret of life" remains elusive to our understanding and even more challenging to incorporate into protein design. One example of allosteric proteins with gre ...

EPFL2024

Mechanisms and functions of protein S-acylation

Françoise Gisou van der Goot Grunberg, Laurence Gouzi Abrami, Francisco De Magalhães Sarmento R De Mesquita

Over the past two decades, protein S-acylation (often referred to as S-palmitoylation) has emerged as an important regulator of vital signalling pathways. S-Acylation is a reversible post-translational modification that involves the attachment of a fatty a ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Methods for high-throughput synthesis and screening of peptide libraries

Zsolt Bognár

Macrocycles provide an attractive modality for drug development but the identification of ligands to targets of interest is hindered by the lack of large macrocyclic compound libraries for high-throughput screening. A strategy to efficiently synthesize lar ...

EPFL2024

The conceptual foundations of innate immunity: Taking stock 30 years later

Bruno Lemaitre

While largely neglected over decades during which adaptive immunity captured most of the attention, innate immune mechanisms have now become central to our understanding of immunology. Innate immunity provides the first barrier to infection in vertebrates, ...

2024

Engineering novel protein interactions with therapeutic potential using deep learning-guided surface design

Anthony Marchand

Proteins are foundational biomolecules of life playing a crucial role in a myriad of biological processes. Their function often requires interplay with other biomolecules, including proteins themselves. Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are essential for ...

EPFL2024

Predicting protein interactions using geometric deep learning on protein surfaces

Freyr Sverrisson

In the domain of computational structural biology, predicting protein interactions based on molecular structure remains a pivotal challenge. This thesis delves into this challenge through a series of interconnected studies. The first chapter introduces th ...

EPFL2024

Solid-phase peptide synthesis in 384-well plates

Christian Heinis, Gontran Sangouard, Mischa Schüttel, Sevan Mleh Habeshian, Edward Jeffrey Will, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda

Newer solid-phase peptide synthesis and release strategies enable the production of short peptides with high purity, allowing direct screening for desired bioactivity without prior chromatographic purification. However, the maximum number of peptides that ...

2024

Antibodies expand the scope of angiotensin receptor pharmacology

Patrick Daniel Barth, Shuhao Zhang

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are key regulators of human physiology and are the targets of many small-molecule research compounds and therapeutic drugs. While most of these ligands bind to their target GPCR with high affinity, selectivity is often l ...

2024

Optimality principles for the analysis of biological processes across scales: From enzyme kinetics to microbiome dynamics

Asli Sahin

Microorganisms are essential for life on Earth, performing key roles in numerous biological processes. Their influence extends across a wide spectrum, from human health and ecological balance to advancements in biotechnology and industrial applications. Th ...

EPFL2024

Opportunities and challenges in design and optimization of protein function

Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa Correia, Casper Alexander Goverde

The field of protein design has made remarkable progress over the past decade. Historically, the low reliability of purely structure-based design methods limited their application, but recent strategies that combine structure-based and sequence-based calcu ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Exploration and modulation of mechanical cues for enhanced cancer immunotherapy

Armand Kurum

The advent of immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) and adoptive transfer of cytotoxic lymphocytes, has transformed the clinical care of cancer. However, a significant proportion of patients are resistant to immunotherapy or experience re ...

EPFL2024

Antibody-peptide conjugates for targeted inhibition of cysteine proteases

Elisa Oricchio

We developed a rational approach to design peptide-based covalent inhibitors and coupled the inhibitors with antibodies for cell-specific delivery. We used this platform to generate antibody-peptide inhibitor conjugates (APICs) that target a family of prot ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Probing Catalytic Sites and Adsorbate Spillover on Ultrathin FeO2-x Film on Ir(111) during CO Oxidation

Harald Brune, Hao Yin, Wei Fang

The spatially resolved identification of active sites on the heterogeneous catalyst surface is an essential step toward directly visualizing a catalytic reaction with atomic scale. To date, ferrous centers on platinum group metals have shown promising pote ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

The simultaneous Selective Catalytic Reduction of N2O and NO over Fe-exchanged zeolites

Filippo Buttignol

Iron-exchanged zeolites are industrial heterogeneous catalysts deployed to remediate anthropogenic emissions of both nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2). Despite the extensive scientific attention received, limited knowledge is availab ...

EPFL2024

A Cluster of Evolutionarily Recent KRAB Zinc Finger Proteins Protects Cancer Cells from Replicative Stress–Induced Inflammation

Didier Trono, Priscilla Turelli, Sandra Eloise Kjeldsen, Cyril David Son-Tuyên Pulver, Evaristo Jose Planet Letschert, Filipe Amândio Brandão Sanches Vong Martins, Olga Marie Louise Rosspopoff, Joana Carlevaro Fita, Romain Forey, Florian Huber

Heterochromatin loss and genetic instability enhance cancer progression by favoring clonal diversity, yet uncontrolled replicative stress leads to mitotic catastrophe and inflammatory responses that promote immune rejection. KRAB domain-containing zinc fin ...

2024

Accessible and highly observable gastrointestinal organoid model systems for studying host-pathogen interactions

Moritz Hofer

Traditional cell cultures have long been fundamental to biological research, offering an alternative to animal models burdened by ethical constraints and procedural intricacies, often lacking relevance to human physiology and disease. Moreover, their inabi ...

EPFL2024

Computational drug development for membrane protein targets

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Pierre Vogel, Shuguang Yuan, Dongchun Ni, Babatunde Edukpe Ekundayo

The application of computational biology in drug development for membrane protein targets has experienced a boost from recent developments in deep learning-driven structure prediction, increased speed and resolution of structure elucidation, machine learni ...

2024

Single-cell analysis of the interactions between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and macrophages

Ophélie Rutschmann

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is a highly effective pathogen infecting nearly a third of the world's population. An M. tuberculosis infection starts when droplets containing bacteria enter an individual's lungs. The first host cells to contact the bacteria ar ...

EPFL2024