Cryogenic Electron Microscopy enables Drug Research for Membrane Protein Targets

This thesis is a collection of my main projects performed over the course of my PhD studies in the past three years. The Results section (Chapters III to V) of this thesis are manuscripts prepared for submission.
Due to global health crises and the growth of pharmaceutical market, drug discovery is in high demand. It is more and more clear that the protein structure determination is an important aspect of the early stages of drug research and development. Furthermore, membrane proteins constitute the majority of druggable targets. Structure determination of membrane proteins is quite challenging with well-established approaches such as NMR and X-ray crystallography. Taking this into account, the goal of my thesis is to apply the new approach of cryogenic electron microscopy single particle analysis in real cases to study membrane proteins as potential drug targets.
Here I have presented three case studies to bring the perspective: How cryo-EM is dealing with the membrane protein and drug researches.