The Biocrystal Facility, a large multidisciplinary laboratory established at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Pathology (IBPM) of CNR, in collaboration with the Biochemistry Department of Sapienza University aims at supporting the italian scientists and the pharmaceutical companies in the research to find new drug and vaccine against the endemic and epidemic diseases through structure-based drug design. The main Biocrystal Facility expertises are the following: recombinant proteins construct design through bioinformatics platforms; protein quaternary structure determination by analytical ultracentrifugation; high throughput crystallization screening (HTS); users support for beam-time application at the European synchrotron radiation facilities (ELETTRA, ESRF, DIAMOND) for crystal diffraction data set measurements; structure determination using MR, MIR, SIR, MAD, SAD methods; structure determination of big macromolecular complexes (> 100 kDa) by single particle cryo- EM.
The Biocrystal Facility aims at providing know-how on crystallization and structure determination of biological macromolecules and their complexes for medical and biotechnological applications. The knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of biomolecules allows the comprehension at molecular level of the physio-pathological processes and furnishes fundamental information to be used for rational drug design. The facility was born to bridge the gap between the synchrotron radiation light sources and the Italian scientific community, in order to increase their use by life sciences researchers in the central and south Italy. Its aim is also to widen the user community of structural biology facilities by training and dissemination. Finally, the facility aims at supporting the pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the research to find new drug and vaccine against the endemic and epidemic diseases, representing an urgent challenge that needs a public-private partnership.