Amiram Goldblum

Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Inst. for Drug Research

Israel

Pharmaceuticals

Current	The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Previous	Hebrew UNiversity of Jerusalem, Stanford Research Institute
Education	The Hebrew University

https://il.linkedin.com/pub/amiram-goldblum/0/b02/b8a
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amiram_Goldblum














Prof. Amiram Goldblum's laboratory of molecular modeling and drug design develops algorithms and computer techniques and employs them, as well as other computational methods, for solving problems in structural biology of proteins and associated problems in ligand binding and drug design.
A central activity in the laboratory is the development of novel optimization methods for solving complex combinatorial problems that are part of most research subjects in structural biology and in drug design. A large scope may be addressed by our novel core technology, called Iterative Stochastic Elimination (ISE) which is used to find optimal solutions to diverse issues such as molecular conformational ensembles, multiple loops in proteins, protein-ligand docking, protein design, focused libraries, cheminformatics and others.

ISE was recently devised in our lab, and is now extended by PhD and MSc students to:

• Constructing conformational ensembles of large (>8 amino acids) loops
• Predicting the preexisting ensembles multiple protein loops
• Building populations and computing properties of large ligands
• Structure based design from molecular scaffolds and fragments
• Predicting molecular properties from database comparisons
• Assigning Drug likeness and molecular bioactivity to molecules
• Docking molecules to their targets
• Design of new functions in proteins
• Designing protein sequence for inhibiting protein – protein interactions
• Differentiating between folding and non-folding sequences
• Assigning Mollecular Bioactivity Indexes and Drug Like Indexes
• Chemoinformatics and QSAR applications

Recent Experimental Success with ISE:

• Acetylcholinesterase inhibition: An ISE model for distinguishing between active inhibitors and non-inhibitors was constructed and applied to the ZINC database with more than 2 million molecules. Top 800 molecules were docked (ISE-dock) and 9 best ones by MBI and docking results were purchased for in vitro studies at the lab of Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin (Excellon (rivastigmine) inventor). Only 5 could be dissolved, and 3 displayed IC50 values of 3.25, 3.5 and 3.75 micromolars.
• Computational Protein Design: we designed 10 peptides (12 positions in each) to block the dimerization/tetramerization of the N-terminal of Bcr-Abl, that triggers the proliferation of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) cells. The peptide sequences were sent to Prof. Martin Rutahrdt at Goethe University, Frankfurt, and 6 of them inhibited the proliferation of CML cells in vitro more than a reference peptide that was used for the design.
• Differential Toxicity:  We applied ISE to distinguish between molecules that displayed toxicity to cancer cells (HCT116 Colon Cancer cell line) more than to normal cell culture (human), and used the results to discover other toxic molecules (about 150 molecuels were picked out of 30,000, with 10% of them showing differential toxiciy, measured both at Targetex company in Budapest, our partners in the CancerGrid consortium (www.cancergrid.eu). Further molecules (~250) were picked and purchased from the enamine catalog of about 1 million molecules, and some 25 of them showed differential cytotoxicity, with about 12 showing it in concentrations < 2 micromolar

Prof. Amiram Goldblum's

Molecular Modeling and Drug Design Group

 

Contacts

Address	Prof. Amiram Goldblum, Molecular Modeling and Drug Design,The Institute for Drug Research, School of Pharmacy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91120, Israel
Email	amiram@vms.huji.ac.il
Phone	Office +972-2-6758701 Cellular +972-544-653292
Fax	+972-2-6796584
Location	The Hebrew University, Ein Kerem Campus, Pharmacy School Building, 4th Floor, Room 403 (Office), Room 424 (MSc students lab)

The group of Amiram Goldblum currently consists of 1 research associate, 6 PhD students and 6 MSc students:

 

Summary

Professor of Chemistry
Chairman of Medicinal Chemistry Department
Spokesperson of the "Peace Now" movement
Announcer, Israeli Public Radio ("Kol Israel")

Specialties:Molecular Modeling, Drug Design, Optimization algorithms, Computational Chemistry, Semiempirical Quantum Chemistry

Experience

Professor of Medicinal Chemistry

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

September 2009 – Present (6 years 2 months)

Head of Molecular Modeling and Drug Design and Discovery at the Institute for Drug Research

Professor

Hebrew UNiversity of Jerusalem

1979 – 2009 (30 years)

Algorithm development for Drug Discovery and Structural Biology and applications to Drug Discovery in many fields, primarily Alzheimer and Cancers

Visiting Scientist

Stanford Research Institute

July 1982 – September 1982 (3 months)Ravenswood Ave. Menlo Park California

Quantuim Chemistry computations of Molecular Reactions

Education

The Hebrew University

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry

1967 – 1977

The Hebrew University

PhD, Chemistry

1967 – 1977

 

 

 

 

 

 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

//////Amiram Goldblum