Research Lines
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Antiviral activity
Main research lines in the antiviral chemotherapy field.
• Rational development of antiviral agents through evaluation in cell-based assays of new derivatives whose design has been driven by SAR studies and, when appropriate, in silico prediction. .
• Target identification through time of addition assays, expression and purification of putative target enzymes and validation through IC50 determination in known or innovative enzyme assays. .
• Definition of the molecular bases of drug resistance through in vitro selection of mutants, definition of their cross-resistance patterns, genome sequencing to identify mutations responsible for resistance and localization of mutations in the 3D target enzyme structure and evaluation of mechanistic consequences.
• In silico studies through molecular docking and automated docking methods for studying the interaction of drugs with putative binding sites; molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to calculate free binding energies; modeling of drug-enzyme interactions for in silico prediction of IC50 and design of new molecules, using advanced simulation software.
Microbial biotechnologies
Main research lines in industrial and environmental biotechnologies.
• Analysis and monitoring of microbial communities responsible for the degradation and transformation of pollutants during bioremediation and phytoremediation of soils and waters contaminated by heavy metals and hydrocarbons.
• Analysis of microbial diversity in natural environments for the development of biotechnological processes for the production of biosurfactants and bioemulsifiers.
• In vitro evaluation of the antibacterial and antifungal activities of synthetic and natural compounds.
• Study of pectinolitic bacteria and pectinases for applications in textile industry.
More recent research lines on other topics are the following:
• Relationships between cholesterol homeostasis and protein misfolding/aggregation in Prion models in vitro and Alzheimer patients.
• Development of anti-protein misfolding/aggregation compounds and study of their mode of action.