Prof. An Ghysels receives prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant

CRIG

We proudly announce that CRIG researcher Prof. An Ghysels received a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant for her groundbreaking research project 'PASTIME', in which she will investigate the role of time in biomedical processes, with applications for cancer therapy.

Time matters: the interplay between fast and slow molecular processes determines the fate of living matter (protein folding, drug delivery, etc.) The aim of the PASTIME project is to properly understand the role of time in biomedical processes. Therefore PASTIME will lay the theoretical foundations of memory reduction and memory tuning in molecular simulations. The new algorithms will make the computer simulations feasible with today’s infrastructure. The time concepts will be applied to study cancer drug transport at the molecular scale. Specifically, we will study the kinetics of drug binding and unbinding to protein binding sites, relevant for drug retention times. Moreover, we will study permeation of drug molecules through cell membranes, relevant for drug delivery. The algorithms will be tailored to screen chemical space, in order to screen a range of drug candidates and a range of sequence variants, thus bringing us closer to personalized medicine.

The research of this ERC consolidator grant will be performed in the BioMMedA group (IBiTech, UGent) and encompasses collaboration with local partners in the CRIG network. To expand the team, researchers (PhD students, post-doc) will be hired with a strong interest in simulations and computing, biochemistry or biophysics at the molecular scale, engineering. Vacancies will be announced on the group’s website.

Of note, Prof. An Ghysels is one of the six UGent researchers that received an ERC Consolidator Grant beginning of 2023. More info in the UGent press release
 

An Ghysels