Photo opportunity 3.45 pm, Friday 7 June, MSI Large Lecture Theatre, University of Dundee
The role of structural biology and molecular medicine in deriving treatments for sleeping sickness and malaria will be discussed at the Bridget Ogilvie Lecture at the University of Dundee tomorrow ( Friday 7 June).
Dr Wim Hol from the University of Washington, Seattle, will deliver his lecture "Medicinal protein crystallography and structural genomics for tropical diseases". He is investigating the structure of proteins with the aim of designing drugs to combat tropical diseases such as sleeping sickness and malaria.
Dr Hol's scientific interests are structure-based drug design and structure genomics for tropical diseases. The major goals of his laboratory are to unravel the three-dimensional structures of protein molecules, to explore the relationships among protein structure, function, and dynamics, and to exploit, where possible, this insight for the design of new medically relevant molecules in particular in the field of infectious diseases.
Dr Hol is a Principal Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Biochemistry and Biological Structure, and Head of the Biomolecular Structure Program at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Groningen, Holland and after two years with UNESCO in Africa, followed by further periods at Groningen and San Diego he moved to his current position. Dr Hol has received the Gold Medal of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society and the Keilin Medal of the Biochemical Society (UK). He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.
The Bridget Ogilvie Lecture was founded in 1997, to acknowledge the former Director of the Wellcome Trust's key role in the events that led the Wellcome Trust to donate £10 million towards the cost of the Wellcome Trust Building at Dundee. This is thought to be the largest single charitable donation ever given to Scotland in its history. The Bridget Ogilvie Lecturer is selected by each Division of the Wellcome Trust Building in rotation. This year's speaker is the selection of the Division of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Microbiology.
The lecture will take place at 4pm in the large lecture theatre, Medical Sciences Institute, University of Dundee.