As a member of the NAMEDIC research center associated with the NARILIS Institute, the CBS is actively developing research projects in medicinal chemistry. The laboratory's activities are based on close collaboration with other (inter)national groups.
The efforts of CBS members can be grouped into 3 main lines of research:
- structural study of host-guest systems and (pharmaceutical)cocrystals
- protein crystallography and structure-based drug design.
The 2 lines of research
X-ray crystallography of small molecules - host-guest systems and cocrystals
In the context of drug design, the CBS laboratory studies intermolecular interaction phenomena associated with host-guest systems, receptor recognition and cocrystallization. Members of the CBS laboratory rely heavily on X-ray crystallography to study the polymorphism and crystallization of pharmaceutical compounds. Part of these investigations also involves numerical simulations carried out in collaboration with the LCT laboratory and requires the use of high-performance computing infrastructures, available via UNamur's Plateforme Technologique en Calcul Intensif (PTCI).
Protein X-ray crystallography - structure-based drug design
The CBS laboratory is also involved in structural biology projects. This research is carried out in close collaboration with the NARILIS research institute. In this context, the laboratory's researchers produce, purify and characterize (enzymology, calorimetric analysis) enzymes of pharmaceutical interest. Efforts are made to crystallize and resolve the structures of selected target enzymes to support structure-based drug design and facilitate drug design projects. This work is carried out within the NAMEDIC research center of the NARILIS Institute.
Equipment
The crystallographic equipment is now part of the Physicochemical Characterization Platform (PC2)
Ongoing research themes demonstrate the group's expertise in materials preparation and their experimental physicochemical characterization. This includes the crystallographic study of new cocrystals of pharmaceutical compounds or chromic solids, and the structural characterization of host-guest supramolecular systems.
Composition of the research group
Promoter (PI)
Johan WOUTERS is also affiliated with the Institutes NISM (Pôle FSM) and NARILIS (Namédic).
- Johan Wouters in the staff directory
- Johan Wouters on the research portal
Other members
Scientific collaborator: Dr. Laurence LEHERTE
Research logistician: Dr. Nikolay TUMANOV