Crystallographic Fragment Screening Workshop: Advancing Structural Biology and Drug Discovery at the RAU Satellite Event

Fragment screening by X-ray crystallography is a rapidly growing field, with several synchrotrons worldwide adopting this methodology and advancing hardware and software to establish it as a high-throughput technique. Target-based fragment screening plays a critical role in drug discovery, with several successful drugs on the market stemming from this approach in recent years. Beyond drug development, mapping protein cavities and interactions provides invaluable insights into the functional characterization of proteins more broadly.

The 3rd SMX - MX at Sirius for Fragment Screening International Workshop, held as a satellite event of the LNLS Annual Users’ Meeting (RAU), brought together leaders in the field, researchers from various centers across Brazil and the globe, and representatives from the national industry. This record-breaking event for a satellite meeting hosted 89 participants, including 46 students and postdoctoral researchers who showcased their work through oral presentations.

The program featured extensive discussions on established pipelines at synchrotrons such as Diamond Light Source, BESSY II, NSLS-II and MAX IV. Presentations covered cutting-edge methodologies for data processing, results from fragment screening campaigns, and an exceptional array of projects from students and early-career researchers. Notably, strategies for managing fragment screening data were a key focus, highlighting the critical need to properly deposit and share these datasets.

The Brazilian scientific community also seized this opportunity to draft a formal request to the LNLS management, advocating for prioritizing infrastructure development to support fragment screening projects at the MANACÁ beamline of our synchrotron.

This workshop underscored the collaborative and transformative potential of fragment screening, bridging structural biology and translational research, while inspiring the next generation of scientists in this exciting field.