26/01/2017

Thesis lecture of Joaquim Olivés on monday 30th of January at 12:00: "Endogenous Metabolites in Drug Discovery: from Plants to Human"

Next monday 30th of January at 12:00, Joaquim Olivés, member of the Systems Pharmacology group of GRIB will defense his thesis: "Endogenous Metabolites in Drug Discovery: from Plants to Human" at Ramón y Cajal room in the ground floor of PRBB. You are all invited to this event.

Abstract

The ability of small molecules to bind to multiple proteins is not exclusive of drugs but general to most chemicals, including endogenous metabolites of living organisms, from plants to humans. In this respect, herbal medicines have been used since the dawn of time for treating discomforts and maladies, but their exact mode of action remains, still nowadays, unknown for most of them. Remedial herbs are composed of hundreds of active compounds interacting between them and with many proteins, forming what we can refer to as a therapeutic cocktail. Some of these interactions are essential for the therapeutic effect of the plant, but some others may be detrimental to their pharmacological action or even cause undesired side effects. Gaining a deeper understanding of the mechanism of action of remedial herbs is one of the main objectives of this Thesis. In addition, recent findings indicate a key role of the endogenous metabolome in drug discovery, a dimension seldom being considered so far. In particular, we are interested in comparing the set of metabolomes currently available as a means to assess the degree of variability among species. Based on this, a second main objective of this Thesis is to develop a computational approach to generate the metabolome from its genome. From plants to humans, accounting for the endogenous metabolome of biological systems emerges as a new paradigm in drug discovery.