Grant: Operating Grant

Seven transmembrane receptors (7TMR) represent the largest class of therapeutic targets for the development of new drugs in a vast diversity of clinical indications. Although these receptors have been the object of intense research for the last 30 years or so, our understanding of how drugs can target these receptors to have specific therapeutic activities remains very incomplete. Results obtained in the last few years by our group and others have open new avenues toward a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the selectivity of drug actions through 7TMR. Recent advances in bioinformatic and phylogenomic analysis offers new means to explore these avenues with the hope of developing new drugs with better therapeutic profiles. The present grant application proposes to combine the use of such new bioinformatic analytical tools with molecular and cellular biology methods in order to unravel the molecular determinants of drug action selectivity.