Fragment-based screening (FBS) by NMR has become a key tool in the pharmaceutical industry for identifying new ligands that bind to specific biological targets. NMR also plays a crucial role in validating drug candidates obtained through high-throughput screening (HTS), where thousands to millions of samples are tested for biological activity at various levels, from molecular interactions to whole organisms.
NMR is particularly well-suited for these tasks, as it allows screening in solution under near-physiological conditions, ensuring both the target and ligands maintain their native states. Typically, NMR uses 1H and 19F nuclei for FBS.
Today, most pharmaceutical companies integrate NMR screening into their drug discovery and design programs. While these programs traditionally focus on enzymes and protein receptors, noncoding RNAs—recognized for their roles in disease and biochemical regulation—are emerging as promising therapeutic targets.
Integrating machine learning with fragment-based screening using NMR has the potential to revolutionize the lead-finding process. In addition, NMR enables quick validation of the secondary structure of new RNA targets. Fragment screening confirms the presence of small-molecule binding sites.
In this webinar, Marcel Blommers, Chief Scientific Officer at Saverna Therapeutics, and Martial Piotto, Pharma Product Manager of Biologics Solutions at Bruker BioSpin, will demonstrate how NMR spectroscopy can be used to identify novel RNA drug targets and inhibitors. You will also learn how FBS by NMR, combined with machine learning, facilitates drug discovery for RNA targets in the pharmaceutical and biopharma industries.
Beyond its critical role in hit identification, NMR provides valuable insights into RNA and RNA-ligand interactions, guiding hit-to-lead optimization.
As such, the webinar will also explore the challenges of targeting dynamic RNA molecules, using examples from Saverna’s portfolio. Saverna’s RNA-targeting NMR platform integrates multiple methods to accelerate early drug discovery with unprecedented speed while maintaining high quality.
Key learning points
- NMR is an effective method for fragment-based screening (FBS).
- It can be used for both protein and RNA targets.
- Because RNA is dynamic, NMR is the preferred method for structural characterization and hit finding.
- Learn how NMR and machine learning work together to identify new RNA target ligands.
Who should attend?
This webinar would be beneficial to anyone looking to improve their lead discovery ability.
This includes pharmaceutical corporations, contract research organizations, and universities, both with and without prior experience in FBS and structural biology. In addition, any company that is a part of this ecosystem, such as fragment library sellers and computational chemistry software providers.
About the speakers
Marcel Blommers is an expert in drug discovery for RNA targets. After finishing his Ph.D. in nucleic acid structure determination (Prof. Hilbers) and a postdoc (Prof. Kaptein), he joined Novartis in 1992. He co-founded Saverna Therapeutics in 2017 to develop a pipeline of small medicines that target RNA.
Martial Piotto received his Ph.D. in NMR spectroscopy from the University of Purdue, US (Pr. D. Gorenstein). He later joined Bruker France as head of NMR application, where he worked on a variety of NMR spectroscopy projects, including the development of new pulse sequences and HRMAS technology.
Over time, he became interested in NMR applications in the pharmaceutical and medical fields. His present study focuses on the characterization of biologics (mAbs, vaccines, and therapeutic oligonucleotides) using NMR and multivariate statistical methods.