The Schürer lab is interested in Systems Biology Drug Discovery, Computational Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry and Data Science. We incorporate aspects of all of these areas to develop targeted translational therapeutics.

Data Science

Systems Biology Drug Discovery

Computational Chemistry

Medicinal Chemistry

Our medicinal chemistry team utilizes the tools and workflows designed above to identify targets and hit compounds, and optimize these hits into advanced pre-clinical leads. We are specifically interested in kinase drug discovery, where using machine learning approaches we have identified several first-in-class kinase molecular probes. This work is in collaboration with clinical and biomedical scientists at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

We incorporate computer aided drug design to optimize hit compounds into potent leads. This is done through molecular docking studies, molecular dynamic simulations, Free-energy perturbation studies, and QSAR analysis. Students in medicinal chemistry synthesize small potent libraries of compounds, and also participate in bioassay screening.

Our laboratory is equipped with several chemical fume hoods, a benchtop HPLC-MS, automated purification, benchtop solvent purification, parallel synthesis reactors and common synthetic glassware and equipment.