Back-to-back seminar - CryoEM & BioTech

Our EU H2020 project - IMpaCT is pleased to invite you to two back-to-back seminars by Dr. Taiana Maia de Oliveira (Associate Director - CryoEM at AstraZeneca, UK) and Dr. António Lucas Nunes (Research & Innovation Director at Bluepharma, PT).

The two seminars will be live at the ITQB Auditorium, from 2h30 pm to 4h00 pm.

2h30 pm - Taiana Maia de Oliveira - Cryo-EM and Integrative Structural Biology at AstraZeneca

Cryo-EM is rapidly gaining traction as an aid to medicinal chemistry within pharmaceutical companies, but it has also been extensively used for enlightening the molecular mode of action of important drug targets that eluded x-ray crystallography for years. In this talk, I will elaborate on the experience we have at AstraZeneca and on how the developments in the EM and Integrative Structural Biology  field allowed us to understand the activation of prominent oncology targets.

03h15 pm - António Lucas Nunes - Examination and characterization of a Lipid and Polymer based Nanoparticles by Cryo-EM - the Bluepharma reality

Within the pharmaceutical industry, there is an increasing need to standardize the development of products in a complete way using 2 or more techniques with different fundamental principles. The above need describes orthogonality, which positions cryo electron microscopy with a fundamental role.
In this context, different case studies from the company Bluepharma will be presented. The lipid and polymer samples have been analysed by Cryogenic Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM). Cryo-EM allows to transform a liquid sample into a vitreous specimen by rapid cooling and permits to directly visualize and analyse particle morphology of colloids in aqueous solution, preserving its colloidal stability and particle typology. After the cryo-EM analysis, the obtained images were processed to obtain quantitative results regarding the particle area, perimeter, maximum diameter, circularity and aspect ratio.