Kim Branson

Systems and Approaches
MMP-2, Abeta, IL-2, IL-4, NFAT, Folding@Home, Ocker

Interests
Molecular Docking, computational drug design, inhibition of protein-protein interaction, alzheimers, predictive toxicology

Summary
I perform research in the development of computational drug design methodologies. My particular areas of expertise include virtual screening, with particular application to the discovery of inhibitors of protein-protein interaction. I perform experimental testing of the predictions of these methods, using a range of biophysical, cellular and animal experiments. I use a variety of ligand binding assays, isothermal titration calorimetry, NMR, and xray methods for the structural and biophysical characterisation of ligand binding. I am presently developing and testing new methods to inhibit cytokine signalling and protein-protein interactions. I am presently working on several systems, exosite inhibitors of MMP-2, inhibition of IL-2 and IL-4 signalling and inhibition of abeta aggregation. Specialties: virtual screening, scoring function design, structural biology, programming (c, c++ , python), docking, ligand based design,