Department of Drug Design and Target Validation

The Department of Drug Design and Target Validation in Halle (Saale) offers a broad range of methods for the development of drugs, including the identification and characterisation of target proteins, the chemical characterisation of drug candidates, effectiveness testing of substances up to animal models and support during preclinical and clinical programmes with analytical methods. The department’s employees have comprehensive experience in industrial and pharma-related research.

The development of new treatment concepts comprises both small molecules and biologicals. These are supported by rational drug design based on X-ray crystallography and the development of validation methods accompanying the studies. In addition to modern analytical methods (MALDI-TOF, LC-MS), the department has a broad range of bio-physical methods to characterise therapeutically relevant metabolic pathways and their key proteins as well as cell-based and pharmacological models to characterise novel chemical and biological agents.

The Department of Drug Design and Target Validation is a certified testing centre of the GLP testing laboratory.