Speakers

© Nobel Media AB. A. Mahmoud

Jean-Pierre Sauvage is Emeritus Professor at the University of Strasbourg and obtained the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2016 for his work on molecular machines.

In a conference entiltled « Molecular Machines and Motors: A Historical Perspective«  he will talk about various fields related to molecular sciences such as coordination photochemistry and solar energy conversion, CO₂ electrocatalytic reduction, chemical topology (interlocking or knotted rings), light-induced charge separation, multifunctional porphyrins as models of the photosynthetic reaction centre as well as molecular machine prototypes. His group got interested in this new field more or less by accident, which demonstrates that jumping in a new field can be very beneficial. The merit of his group goes to a large extent to the young and less young researchers he has been working with.

Knotane – Source Wikipedia

Crystallographers in the pharma world of drug discovery

Sanofi is a world-leading pharmaceutical company, committed to providing drugs to patients in a wide array of therapeutic areas, such as vaccines, oncology, immune inflammation, neurologic and metabolic diseases. Its research teams bring together scientists with a wide variety of backgrounds, from cell biologists and veterinaries to artificial intelligence specialists, including crystallographers. We will describe the main steps of drug research and development, the daily work of multidisciplinary project teams and how the role and missions of small-molecule crystallographers and macromolecule crystallographers concur to the objectives of a pharmaceutical company. Finally, we will provide examples of crystallography impact on drug research projects.

The challenging crystallography of mixed-anion inorganic compounds

Solid state compounds form the basis of modern technologies and are very often based on transition metal oxides. The combination of multiple anions in a single compound is challenging due to the strong thermodynamic preference of the cation(s) towards only one of them. However, progress have been made in the synthesis of such compounds using soft topochemical reactions for example. While some of these mixed anion compounds are relatively easy to characterize due to a large difference in their ionic radii and their X-ray scattering factor, it is not the case of oxyfluorides. To precisely characterize the anion arrangement or absence of thereof, a multi-technique approach combining spectroscopies with conventional diffraction techniques is necessary. This will be illustrated though the example of K_xVPO₄F_1‑yO_y­ battery materials whose crystal structure at various O/F substitution rate and K⁺ deintercalation rate could only be understood with the help of EXAFS, ³¹P NMR spectroscopy and DFT calculations along with powder X-ray diffraction.

Crystal structure of KVPO₄F, built from corrugated chains of VO₄F₂ octahedra with alternating cis and trans fluorine arrangement. In KVPO₄F_0.5O_0.5, F and O are statistically distributed on the green site.

Teasing out the secrets of subtle protein dynamics.

Structural biology experiments are focusing increasingly with the small, subtle motions underpinning protein function. Our collective understanding of how these subtle motions translate to functional impact is limited, and this is hampering efforts in protein engineering and drug development. The Protein Machinists’ lab develops conceptual frameworks for defining, modelling and navigating the protein’s conformational space, focusing on the representation of protein entities (RoPE). The first tool of RoPE is a simple and powerful visualisation of conformational space from experimental data. This talk will illustrate with examples how these tools help find the narrative in modern multi-dataset experiments and drive hypothesis development.

Dr. Daruisz Czernecki

Biology award

Dr. Laure Paradis-Fortin

Chemistry award

Dr. Corentin Chatelier

Physics award