Protein Structure and Diseases

Structural genomics is the systematic determination of 3D structures of proteins representative of the range of protein structure and function found in nature. The goal is to build a body of structural information that will predict the structure and potential function for almost any protein from knowledge of its coding sequence. This is essential information for understanding the functioning of the human proteome, the ensemble of tens of thousands of proteins specified by the human genome.

While most structural biologists pursue structures of individual proteins or protein groups, specialists in structural genomics pursue structures of proteins on a genome wide scale. This implies large-scale cloning, expression and purification. One main advantage of this approach is economy of scale.

• Examines the three dimensional structure of all proteins of a given organism, by experimental methods such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy
• Looks at structural genomics as a foundation of drug discovery as discovering new medicines is becoming more challenging and the pharmaceutical industry is looking to new technologies to help in this mission

Rossen Donev received his PhD degree in 1999 from the Institute of Molecular Biology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He did postdoctoral training at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, UK (renamed after the merger with Cancer Research Campaign to Cancer Research UK, London Research Institute) and Cardiff University. In 2007 he was awarded a New Investigator Grant Award from the Medical Research Council (UK) to establish himself as an independent Principle Investigator. In 2010 Dr. Donev was appointed Senior Lecturer at Swansea University. In 2016 Dr. Donev joined MicroPharm Ltd (UK) where currently he is Head of Research. He has published more than 60 research papers, chaired scientific meetings and given invited plenary talks. Rossen Donev has consulted on projects related to development of treatments for neurodevelopmental disorders and cancer therapies. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Advances in Protein Chemistry and Structural Biology and on editorial board of several other journals. His research interests include signaling pathways involved in neuropsychiatric disorders and tumor escape from the immune system, and development of therapeutic strategies for their treatment. More recently he has focused on development of immunotherapeutics for non-systemic applications.