Targeting Protein-Protein Interactions

Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Targeting Protein-Protein Interactions conference focuses on discovery of therapeutic agents that inhibit or disrupt protein-protein interactions (PPIs) that stay together longer than they should, or stabilize molecular complexes that fall apart too easily. PPIs are harder to target by small molecules than are traditional intracellular enzymatic drug targets because PPI sites are usually ‘flat’, making it hard for small molecules to gain a foothold. Thanks to advances in detecting ligand-target binding, such as biophysical methods and newer lead-generation approaches such as DNA-encoded libraries (DEL), fragment-based lead design (FBLD), and covalent-based tools, a few drug candidates against PPIs have reached the market in the past decade and many are progressing in clinical trials. Join us to hear how scientists are discovering and designing small molecules or larger and beyond-rule-of-five (bRo5) molecules such as macrocyclic peptides, to disrupt or stabilize medically relevant protein complexes, especially intracellular PPIs.