Graduate School of health and Medical Sciences

Keeping up with the interactome - How IDPs work
Provider: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

Activity no.: 3186-25-00-00	There are 15 available seats
	Enrollment deadline: 01/03/2025

Date and time	19.05.2025, at: 00:00 - 24.05.2025, at: 16:00
Regular seats	22
Course fee	9,720.00 kr.
Lecturers	Kristian Strømgaard
ECTS credits	3.90

Contact person	Lucy Holt E-mail address: lucy.holt@bio.ku.dk

Enrolment Handling/Course Organiser	PhD administration E-mail address: phdkursus@sund.ku.dk

Aim and content This course is free of charge for PhD students at Danish universities (except Copenhagen Business School), and for PhD Students from NorDoc member faculties. All other participants must pay the course fee. Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at a Danish university, you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. This also applies to PhD students from NorDoc member faculties. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to applicants on the waiting list. Learning objectives A student who has met the objectives of the course have gained knowledge and insight into practical and theoretical aspects of state-of-the-art technical advances within the field of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), including their interactions, their role in health and disease, as well as their potential drugability. This understanding will specifically focus on techniques relevant for studying IDPs, describing their ensembles and investigating their interactions. A student who has met the intended learning objectives of the course will gain: 1. Knowledge of and insight into practical and theoretical aspects of cutting-edge technical advances within the field of IDP, which are relevant for understanding their interactions at a molecular level 2. Skills in hands-on acquisition and interpretation of experimental and in silico data involving IDP, data presentation and method limitations and advantages 3. Competences on how to integrate the acquired relevant data obtained using a set of state-of-the art techniques for describing ensembles of IDPs and their interactions and how to apply this within their own projects 4. Knowledge about recent advanced techniques employed to the drugability of IDPs and the opportunity to discuss the methods and approaches with the invited responsible professors. 5. Developing intellectual agility, ability to see potential in ideas, and build the capacity to expand through critical thinking and problem solving as part of their current project and beyond Content IDPs are notoriously difficult to work with. They exist in ensembles of diverse, highly dynamic states that elude classical structural biology methodology as x-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. Their disordered and dynamic nature makes them challenging to study and combinations of methodologies including NMR spectroscopy, single-molecule techniques, in silico computation and bioinformatics are needed. Due to their dynamic properties, IDPs expand the molecular communication toolbox, and they typically have enlarged interactomes in which the dynamics enables regulatory potential. The same properties, and their lack of druggable binding pocket make disordered proteins extremely challenging as drug targets despite playing key roles in health and disease. The students will obtain insights into the methods required for studying intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and protein regions (IDRs). This will include: - lectures with theoretical description of methods by 14 world-leading experts - practicals where the students get acquainted with the required procedures including hands-on sessions - group-work and presentation of key scientific papers together with the invited authors - poster presentations during the course to allow discussion of project with the invited speakers - Applicative lectures from keynote speakers from industry working towards drugging IDPs - a “follow the molecule” tour to the Novo Nordisk A/S company to obtain insight to how proteins are developed into drugs and drug targets. In the course lectures, the students are introduced to methodologies such as: - Use of computation to generate ensembles of a specific IDPs/IDRs - Combination of methodologies to study their involvement in condensates and phase separation of relevance to their function. - Introducing the theory behind single molecule fluorescence techniques, NMR spectroscopy (in solution and in solids). Their strengths and limitations and the basic requirements for obtaining high quality data - Kinetic models for interactions of IDPs leading to mechanistic decomposition of their interactions - High-throughput phage-display methods to identifying IDP binders and deep-mutational scanning techniques to identify key sequence determinant. - Chemical biology tools to develop modulators of the IDP interactome - Molecular mechanisms of diseases involving IDPs. - Molecular barcoding technologies and next-generation disease modeling to facilitate drug discovery in complex diseases. The practical exercises will provide insight into: - Bioinformatic analyses of IDPs using state-of-the-art methods - Computational modelling of an IDP ensemble - Analyses of real experimental data obtained from high-throughput screening, single-molecule FRET, NMR, stopped-flow kinetics - On-line NMR analyses of IDP residual structure and interactions The workshop will include: - A journal club. Here the students get to prepare and present a scientific paper. The papers describe state-of-the-art analysis performed by internationally renowned professors. The students meet before the summer school and will during the school in groups present and listen to additional published work. - papers. The program will also include: - Lectures on integrative approaches to study IDPs/IDRs and their interaction as well as their drugability presented by internationally renowned professors. - Poster session where all participants will be expected to present a poster on their individual PhD project and to receive feedback from the lecturers of the course Participants The course is an advanced interdisciplinary course and students interested in understanding an intriguing group of proteins, the IDPs and IDR, and their biological ensembles and interactions, including their drugability are encouraged to apply from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, biochemistry, biology, physics, computer science, human biology, neuroscience, and the pharmaceutical sciences. Students will be expected to have some basic knowledge of protein science. Relevance to graduate programmes The course is relevant to PhD students from the following graduate programmes at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, UCPH: - Pharmaceutical Sciences (Drug Research Academy) - Molecular Mechanisms of Disease - Immunology and Infectious Diseases Language English Form Lectures, experimental work, group work, presentations, round table discussions, poster presentations. Course directors Professor Birthe B. Kragelund, BIO, SCIENCE, UCPH; bbk@bio.ku.dk Professor Kristian Strømgaard, HEALTH, UCPH; kristian.stromgaard@sund.ku.dk Teachers Professor Tanja Mittag, Sct Judes Children’s Hospital, Memphis, US Professor Kresten Lindorff-Larsen, BIO, SCIENCE, UCPH Professor Ylva Ivarsson, Uppsala University, Sweden Dr. Michael Wehr, Systasy Bioscience, Munich, Germany Professor Zsuzsanna Dostztányi, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary Professor Kristian Strømgaard, HEALTH, UCPH Professor Stefano Gianni, Sprienza University of Rome, Italy Professor Per Jemth, Uppsala University, Sweden Dr. Franziska Schöppe, Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark Professor Benjamin Schuler, University of Zurich, Switzerland Professor Alfonse De Simone, University of Naples, Italy Dr. Malene Ringkjøbing Jensen, CNRS, Grenoble, France Alleyn Plowright, Chief Scientific Officer, Pangea Bio, London UK Professor Birthe B. Kragelund, BIO, SCIENCE, UCPH Dates May 19th – May 24th - 2025 Course location HEALTH (PHARMA) Registration Please register before March 1st, 2025 Expected frequency This course is a once-off. Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Applications from other participants will be considered after the last day of enrolment. Note: All applicants are asked to submit invoice details in case of no-show, late cancellation or obligation to pay the course fee (typically non-PhD students). If you are a PhD student, your participation in the course must be in agreement with your principal supervisor.

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