Prous Institute for Biomedical Research presented at the XIXth International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry organized by European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC), the 2006 Award for outstanding contributions to the development of new technologies in the field of medicinal chemistry. The 2006 recipient is Professor Dario Neri, Professor of Biological Macromolecules at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland, for his pioneering work establishing synthetic antibody libraries, obtained by employing phage display technology.
Professor Dario Neri’s multi-disciplinary research effort on these libraries has led to the discovery of many specific antibodies against various antigens, a recent example of which is the ETH-2-gold synthetic antibody phage display library. He has developed a very elegant method for the screening of DNA-bound low molecular weight (LMW) fragments, which self assemble into libraries of N x N potential binding or inhibitory entities (N = number of LMW fragments; “Encoded self-assembling libraries” or “ESACHEL”). Although this technology is still in its early stages, it holds significant potential for the discovery of new LMW binders to variety of protein targets. Professor Neri is co-founder of a spin-off company and, apart from his many scientific achievements, is also head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the ETH. Because of his outstanding and innovative scientific achievements in the field of drug discovery and development, and his broader managerial responsibilities, he has been awarded the 2006 Prous Award.
About the Prous Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery
The "Prous Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery" was established to encourage innovation and investigation in technologies related to drug discovery. The Award is given biennially to acknowledge the discovery, evaluation or use of a new technology.
About Prous Institute for Biomedical Research
Prous Institute is a privately-held research-driven organization committed to the discovery and development of innovative therapies through the use of its powerful computational tools and basic research. Prous Institute also fosters the development of prediction technologies used for regulatory and industry safety screening programs. Prous Institute receives several government grants and actively collaborates with academia and industry.