Overview

The Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, the NAS of Ukraine:

Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics (IMBG) of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) was founded in 1973 by prominent Ukrainian scientists – Academicians of NASU B.E. Paton, S.M. Gershenson, G.Kh. Matsuka, and V.P. Zosymovych, P.K. Shkvarnikov. Since 2003 the Institute is headed by Honoured Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, Academician of NASU, Professor Ganna Elskaya.

It is one of the leading institutions in life science research in Ukraine of high level research potential and excellent results of investigations, especially in molecular biomedicine area. The IMBG research activity is concentrated on the modern trends of molecular biology and genetics. The main scientific interests of the scientists are: structural and functional genomics; proteomics and protein engineering; molecular and cellular biotechnology; bioinformatics, computational modeling and design.

More about the Institute...

The Department of Medicinal Chemistry:

We are a team of experts in organic chemistry, molecular biology and molecular modeling. We have longstanding experience and powerful facilities in organic synthesis as well as in rational design of small molecule inhibitors of biological macromolecules using computer modeling, in vitro tests and chemical optimization. Historically, our studies are focused mainly on protein kinases and their inhibitors; however, there are also other drug targets from different protein families among our objects. Currently, the new area of our research is the rational design of novel antimicrobial agents. Recently, we have patented two chemical classes of compounds with antituberculosis activity. At this time we search antibiotics toward multidrug resistant ESKAPE pathogens, which include Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumonie, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter spp. Also, we develop antifungal agents toward Cryptococcus neoformans and Candida albicans.    

Our research portfolio includes more than 200 publications, 12 patents, more than 30 successfully finished contract research projects and grant applications.

Expertise description:

• Synthesis of biologically relevant molecules and development of new organic synthetic methodologies.
• Rational design of highly active and specific inhibitors of protein kinases within efficient infrastructure of molecular modeling, biochemical screening and organic synthesis facilities.
• Rational design and synthesis of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase inhibitors.
• Chemical optimization of biologically active compounds with the aim of improvement of their activity, selectivity and ADME properties.
• Receptor-based virtual screening and computational chemistry calculations, SAR analysis, intensive research in the field of molecular dynamics simulation of macromolecules and their complexes with small molecule ligands.
• Development of novel fluorescent probes for application in diagnostic systems, elaboration of new methods for oligonucleotides and proteins labeling by polymethine dyes. The mechanism of interaction of cyanine dyes with DNA, RNA and proteins is also being studied.

Our in-house stock collection contains about 200,000 small organic compounds which are represented by derivatives of various types of heterocyclic systems and their fused analogs. Among them, there are more than 100,000 drug-like compounds immediately available for screening. At our disposal are fully equipped chemical laboratories for organic synthesis with routine access to NMR and LC-MS facilities; well-arranged supply of reagents and access to all necessary information databases; computer cluster for calculation of various molecular modeling tasks.

We are looking forward to a fruitful and effective collaboration!