The European Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) FRAGNET has been set up to train a new generation of Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the much needed holistic understanding of the many aspects of Fragment-Based Drug Discovery (FBDD) thereby enabling them to use the different methods and technologies to develop the next generation of medicines. In the last ten years, FBDD has proven to be an effective approach towards the discovery of small-molecule compounds (ligands) that can bind to biological target molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. FBDD projects begin with screening low molecular weight compounds (so-called fragments) against a biological target (most often a protein). This requires a fragment library and an experimental method to detect binding. Once hits have been identified, the structure of hit fragments binding to the target is determined by X-ray crystallography, NMR methods or molecular modelling approaches. The fragments are then evolved to compounds with higher affinity and activity by structure-based design and synthetic chemistry. The resulting compounds can be used as pharmacological tool compounds and starting points for drug discovery. Within FRAGNET, all of these different aspects and steps of FBDD are studied by fifteen ESRs. This poster will give an overview of the consortium setup, the different ESR projects and cross-fertilization strategies.

FRAGNET: A European consortium to advance fragment-based drug discovery and educate its future advocates

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.