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Enquiries: NRC-BRI
Phone: 514-496-6100
Email: bri-info@cnrc-nrc.gc.ca
6100 Royalmount avenue
Montréal,
Quebec,
H4P 2R2
Canada
Enabling Technologies Program
The Health Sector focuses its research on establishing new means and technologies to predict structures for pharmaceutical applications as well as to virtually screen, identify, analyze and evaluate potential lead compounds.
Virtual Screening
The Computational Chemistry and Biology group is developing in silico molecular models in order to understand in microscopic detail how proteins interact with small molecules such as drugs. The aim is to create global-level models of gene interaction networks derived from bioinformatics analyses of large-scale micro-array experiments and biological databases. A variety of computational tools ranging from physics-based detailed molecular simulations to pattern-recognition and data-mining approaches in bioinformatics are utilized. Genomic database mining and gene-network analysis, together with the development of web-based software for DNA micro-array primer design, database management, processing, analysis and visualization, are some of the competitive capabilities of the bioinformatics group.
Signalling Networks
Several BRI Health Sector research groups direct their efforts towards the study of protein function at the networks/systems level, with an emphasis on proteins that serve critical regulatory functions in biological signalling events. The approach is to design quantitative experiments that can be used to analyze potentially hundreds or thousands of molecular interactions within a practical timeframe. The ultimate goal is to identify weak spots of cellular machineries and signalling networks, which can be regulated or attacked by designer molecular devices or therapeutic agents. This Collaborative effort of the Genetics and the Biomolecular NMR and Protein Research groups aims at the designing of multivalent polypeptides for therapeutic applications in cancer and C. albicans-mediated infectious diseases.
Chemical Libraries
Through its combined expertise in medicinal chemistry as well as internal/external collaborations, the Chemical Biology group at the BRI is able to search a broad range of existing drugs and their analogs for each desired activity, and then to modify any lead compounds to eliminate any known undesired activities and produce new molecules that are patentable. To achieve this goal, the group has developed general chemical libraries (GCLs) that enable low-cost and low-risk drug development for unspecified new disease targets. The GCLs consist of drugs, drug analogs and natural products from medicinal plants.
