Unique Capabilities of Cryo-EM in Structure Determination and its Potential in Drug Discovery

As part of Advancing Drug Discovery: A Webinar Series of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a session on Unique Capabilities of Cryo-EM in Structure Determination and its Potential in Drug Discovery will be held on March 25th, 2025.

Cryo-EM has emerged as a powerful structural technique that is generally applicable to samples spanning from single proteins to large viruses, including integral membrane proteins and large macromolecular assemblies, even when they are flexible or involve transient, regulatory interactions. The minimal requirement concerning sample amount and the capacity to describe conformational ensembles make cryo-EM the technique of choice when characterizing samples that challenge methods like NMR or crystallography.

The resolution of the structures obtained by cryo-EM has been increasing with improvement in hardware and software, making it relevant in the drug discovery arena.

Dr. Eva Nogales, Distinguished Professor in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, will introduce the technique and demonstrate its capability in studies of the microtubule cytoskeleton, molecular machinery involved in gene expression regulation, and other biological systems that had defied structural characterization by more traditional methods.

Please visit the National Academies’ Unique Capabilities of Cryo-EM in Structure Determination and its Potential in Drug Discovery event page for more information and to register.