High resolution powder diffraction of proteins associated with pharmaceutical interest.

The current study is focused on the structural determination and characterization of crystalline proteins and their complexes presenting interest for the delivery of biopharmaceuticals, with the aim of structure-based drug design for enhanced and long-lasting action against diseases and epidemics. The experimental method to be employed is XRPD, which allows polymorph identification and extraction of structural information from low quality polycrystalline samples, grown under different physicochemical conditions. We mainly focus on the effect of factors as pH and organic ligands, to simulate in vivo conditions. The main biological macromolecules that we will study are: (i) Human Insulin (HI) and its complexes with various ligands, for the ongoing exploration of a detailed phase map, which is crucial for the development of improved drug formulations and (ii) virus proteins, which are actively being studied in search of efficient inhibitors, but have proven difficult to crystallize.