Research focus

Our research at the Structural Immunology Lab focuses on proteins, which have an important role in inflammation, cancer and infection.

We are interested in finding out how proteins interact with other molecules and how to utilize the obtained information for biomedical and diagnostics applications. Currently, we aim to solve 3D structures for several potential human drug targets and virulence factors from pathogenic bacteria in complex with their ligands to elucidate functional details in molecular recognition. As the studied proteins are novel targets, the obtained research results will be utilized in designing diagnostics and therapeutic approaches.

The research projects are highly integrative and interdisciplinary, combining a wide-ranging repertoire of methodologies ranging from 3D structure determination and other structural biology methods to biochemical, biophysical and molecular cell biological approaches. Moreover, we intertwine experimental methods with traditional and AI-based in silico approaches.

In all projects, our expertise on structural biology, structural bioinformatics and drug design is combined with and complemented by our collaborators’ strong expertise to assemble transdisciplinary national and international competence networks on the topic.