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Chemical Biology Core Facility

Small molecules play essential roles in many areas of basic research and are often used to address important biological questions.

The Chemical Biology Core Facility (CBCF) offers the infrastructure and expertise for assay development, small-molecule screening and computational chemistry approaches to design compounds against novel targets for ‘biotool’ or early drug development.

Services provided

The facility is set up as a collaboration between EMBL and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) to provide the infrastructure and expertise to open up small molecule development to research groups at these institutions.

  • Assay development and high-throughput screening
  • Binding affinity studies for small molecules and antibodies using the Biacore surface plasmon resonance technology (SPR)
  • Computational screening using ligand-based and structure-based design strategies
  • With the help of EMBL’s Chemical Synthesis Core Facility  hit compounds can be optimised towards high quality tool compounds
  • Managing compound acquisition through our chemistry partners
  • Support in generating structure-activity relationships
  • Support in optimisation of tool compounds towards therapeutic use

Screening

High Throughput Screening (HTS) allows a researcher to quickly conduct thousands of tests against a biological target through the use of automation (robotics, liquid handling devices, sensitive detectors), data processing and control software. 

Computational Chemistry

Computational chemistry methods are integral to the process of active molecule identification and optimisation. These include:

  • Chemoinformatics approaches
  • Molecular modelling
  • Computational screening using ligand-based and structure-based design strategies
  • Managing compound acquisition through our chemistry partners
  • Commercial software available: SYBYL-X including SurflexDock and SurflexSim, LeadIT including FlexX and FlexS, Muse, Spartan
  • Access to the HPC compute cluster at EMBL which provides access to more than 5800 CPUs for scientific computing at EMBL

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