We held our first in-person meeting at SLAS2026 last month- with 54 attendees who joined us for the discussion. A full recording of the meeting is posted to the SLAS Applied site (here)
I opened the session with slides about the TIG and a call to action for attendees to consider joining our TIG Advisory Panel that will hold responsiblity for community building through use of the SLAS Science Circles (webinar) platform. More to come about that under separate cover. We have an exciting year planned, and are actively recruiting for our Advisory Panel to help grow this community. Please reach out with any questions or to communicate your interest in joining this leadership team.
That was followed by our two scientific talks focused on unlocking Membrane Proteins for biophysical lead discovery - Jan Kubicek discussed his career-spanning focus to develop formulation tools that matured into Cube Biotech's NativeMP Platform which improve the protein science of membrane protein preparation by retaing native lipids- this provides improved handleability & biochemical characteristics while greatly reducing preparation efforts. Then JP Guilinger provided an overview of X-chem's DEL platform and described their experiences in leveraging this binding-based technology to discover validated hits for GPCRs, including those prepared using Cube Biotech's NativeMP Platform.
An invigorating discussion followed- which was our goal of forming this new community!
I am excited for what this TIG achieves in the coming year and am hopeful you'll consider contributing to our efforts (e.g. by joining us on the Advisory Panel!)
More soon!
Tim
Conference Meeting Description
Welcome to our new TIG!
Agenda:
Tim Foley - opening remarks about the plans that Jarrod Walsh (AZ) and I have for the TIG this year; as well as discuss ways to get involved with building this new community. (slides here: PDF)
Following those remarks, our scientific program will include two talks:
Jan Kubicek (Cube Biotech) titled "Automated Membrane protein workflow for Drug Discovery utilizing the NativeMPTM Technology" (slides here PDF) and
John (JP) Guilinger (X-Chem) titled "DEL screening to find high quality, novel hits for GPCRs" (slides here PDF)
LINKS:
SLAS2026 event recording (free for prior attendees): Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening: SLAS2026 Topical Interest Groups
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Timothy Foley
DNA Encoded Libraries
Pfizer
Groton CT
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