Sérgio F. Sousa represented BioSIM at the “Wellcome Genome Campus Conference – Target Validation Using Genomics and Informatics” that took place at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany, between December 8 and 10, with a communication entitled “Looking into Protein Targets from the Perspective of the Ligand”.
In the past few years, exceptional progress has been made in making available thousands of DNA variants that are robustly associated with clinically relevant human traits. This is providing a rich source of molecular points for drug discovery and a deeper understanding of human biology. This meeting aimed to highlight advances in the use of high-throughput methods and functional validation techniques that can influence the selection of new drug targets and the development of precision medicine. The program also presented recent advances in visualization techniques, computational tools and new platforms that provide data integration and can enhance the user experience.
This meeting brought together researchers based in academia and industry to focus on the opportunities and challenges for genomics in drug discovery. Multi-omics (e.g. genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics), epidemiology, molecular biology, and computational approaches were covered, focusing on the contributions of these methods to target validation.