UBC’s Dr. Sriram Subramaniam is using powerful cryo-electron microscopes to accelerate drug development for cancer, infectious diseases and more.
UBC AI & Health Network’s Dr. Sriram Subramaniam has a UBC-based lab that features high-powered microscopes as tall as a city bus are allowing researchers to see the very atoms that make up the proteins in our cells — as well as the diseases that affect them.
These cryo-electron microscopes represent a new frontier in drug discovery and development. By firing beams of electrons at samples frozen to nearly -196°C, Dr. Subramaniam and his team are producing detailed structural images of the proteins within human tissue, tumours, bacteria and viruses. With these molecular maps as a guide, the researchers are designing precision treatments tailored to the atomic structure of diseases like cancer, COVID-19, HIV and beyond.