Lara Scharbert
Ph.D. Student
Curriculum Vitae
since 2021
PhD student at the Computational Biochemistry Group at IBI-7: Structural Biochemistry, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. The project is funded by VolkswagenStiftung.
2018 – 2021
MSc in Biochemistry at the Heinrich-Heine University, Germany. The MSc thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Birgit Strodel.
2014 – 2018
BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Cologne, Germany. The BSc thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. Monique Aumailley.
Research interests
- Computer-aided drug design in the context of combating COVID-19 caused
by SARS-CoV-2 - Improvement of enzyme stability in organic solvents using MD simulations
Contact Details
Forschungszentrum Jülich
IBI-7: Structural Biochemistry
52425 Jülich
Germany
Tel.: +49 2461 61-9477
Email: l.scharbert@fz-juelich.de
Ph.D. project
When COVID-19 became a global pandemic in the spring of 2020, we initiated the computer-aided drug design (CADD) project to contribute to the discovery and development of a prospective drug against SARS-CoV-2. We screened over one million compounds by docking them against the main protease (3CLpro) and used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to identify compounds with the highest binding affinity. In our current work, we aim to test D-peptides for their inhibitory activity against 3CLpro and use CADD to improve the pharmacokinetics and drug efficacy of the best candidates. Together with our collaborators at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Heinrich-Heine University we are able to investigate the ligands holistically for their drug potential through in silico, in vitro and in cell approaches.
