From my guest column at the Biophysical Society Blog.

One of my major reasons for attending BPS this year was to expand my knowledge in a field that isn’t very important at all for the work that I do in my day to day.  My work involves designing molecules that can alter protein function and hopefully “drug” an interaction or protein conformation that is useful therapeutically.  The readouts for whether we are successful are pragmatic ones — we look at cell viability, downstream effects, preservation or desolation of certain cellular pathways as needed.  What we generally don’t concern ourselves with is confirming with mechanistic insight how exactly the molecules we make do what they do.  So I decided to go learn more about biophysical techniques for looking at protein dynamics and allostery — the best place to do that was BPS.

From my guest column at the Biophysical Society Blog.

Since I’m an engineer (undergrad) and applied physicist (PhD) trying to make my way in the field of drug discovery and designer therapeutics, I sometimes feel a bit like a fish out of water when surrounded by peers with more formal training in organic chemistry, pharmacology and drug discovery.  This has never been more obvious to me than during this poster session with visits from and discussions with scientists from leading organizations as Pfizer, Roche, and Novartis.  I think I managed the much appreciated but challenging interest from these questioning individuals, but I couldn’t help but get dragged into the middle of an argument (perhaps better stated as a polarizing discussion) with my questioners: Small molecules vs. Biologics.

From my guest column at the Biophysical Society Blog.

The first full day of BPS 2015 began a little bit late for me, with my west coast body insisting that 8 am was 5 am and not at all an appropriate time to be getting out of bed. The “New and Notable” Symposium began at 10:45am which was quite a bit more palatable to my jet lag addled brain.  This symposium was very well attended, with most of the talks being standing room only.  This is unsurprising as the speakers were selected by the program committee from over 100 preeminent researchers nominated by the society’s membership.  The talks ranged from a study attempting to mimic membrane channels with chopped up single-walled carbon nanotubes to a structural study of the activation and sensitization of ionotropic receptors.

Getting to hear about many different topics of research is one of the advantages of a big meeting like BPS, and I was very please to listen to Gaya Amarasinghe’s talk on the mechanisms through which the Ebola virus evades the immune system.  Everyone knows about Ebola, and it’s also no secret that it’s remarkably well-equipped to combat our immune systems.  This talk went from a 30,000 foot view of the recent international outbreak of Ebola all the way to elucidating the detailed molecular interactions of one protein-protein interaction between host and pathogen.