ERC Advanced Grant to chase the holy grail of ’drugging the undruggable’

Photo: Luc Brunsveld. Research led by Luc Brunsveld on new technological concepts for drug development is awarded a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant worth 2.5 million euros. Luc Brunsveld, professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant worth 2.5 million euros to carry out ambitious and curiosity-driven research. Brunsveld's project, which is known as PPI-glue, will focus on unaddressed classes of proteins that could be used in drug development in the future. For Luc Brunsveld , the award of the ERC Advanced Grant is a key accolade that will help him achieve goals in terms of research and mentoring. "As a university, our first and foremost responsibility is to educate and train students to a high standard so that they can go on to roles as scientists in both industry and academia in the future," says Brunsveld. And according to Brunsveld, central to ensuring this training is the acquirement of external funding. "It is crucial that we as academic scientists in the natural sciences perform top-notch research with our students as this is a prerequisite to acquire further external research, such as this grant, to continue training students." Meet PPI-Glue. Illustration of 14-3-3 protein and IDP. (Image: Luc Brunsveld). The prestigious ERC Advanced Grant will allow Brunsveld's laboratory of Chemical Biology to pursue cutting-edge, high-risk research on the development of key innovations that could be used as integrated elements of drug development in the future. And what are the elements in question?