Biomacromolecule-Ligand Interactions

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Adjunct Professor of the Graduate Faculty MBRB Room: 3020, MC870, Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy

EDUCATION:
• 1979-1985 Postdoc-Research Associate, Purdue University
• 1978 PhD University of Texas at Austin
• Licenciado Degree (Physics, Mathematics), University of Valladolid, Spain.

MEMBERSHIPS:
• AAAS
• American Crystallographic Association,
• American Chemical Society

HONORS/AWARDS:
• Fullbright Scholarship, 1972

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
After more than 22 years in the pharmaceutical industry using the concepts and methods of Structure-Based Drug Discovery, I have come to realize its power and its limitations. Moreover, I think that the complete emphasis on the potency of compounds towards their targets as the driving force in drug discovery has serious limitations. The complexity of the drug-discovery field requires the development of more inteligent variables that will provide a deeper insight into the drug discovery process and that can help us devise better ways to drive drug-discovery through the 21st century. I want to develop better ways to direct drug discovery by using other variables than the standard Ki between the compound and the target. In particular, I believe that Ligand Efficiency Indices (LEIs) can play critical role as 'figures of merit' to drive drug discovery.

Specialties:

• Structure based drug discovery
• Fragment-based drug discovery
• Screening by crystallography
• Macromolecular crystallography
• Ligand efficiency indices applied to drug discovery