Research plan includes activities and synergies between the research Groups in the fields of cell cycle regulation, an area where the Perrakis, Lygerou and Taraviras lab have excellent track record applying well-established protocols and to specifically develop methodology on the border between cell biology imaging and biophysics, e.g. single molecule biophysics by TIRF or confocal microscopy, will be considered.

Τhe use of existing equipment and methods (NMR and biophysics) to establish fragment based lead drug discovery and support hit to lead campaigns is also among the foreseen research activities. The Spyroulias group and the Perrakis group have complementary expertise in this subject and can establish robust pipelines both for academic discovery but also crucially for industrial application. Targets will include enzymes in ADP-ribosylation pathway implicated in viral infection and host-cell defense, such as non-structural polyproteins (nsP3, and especially the so-called “macro” domains) or proteolytic enzymes from SARS1, MERS, SARS-CoV-2 and human enzymes, like Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases proteins, from the Spyroulias lab and mitotic kinases or their regulatory domains from the Perrakis lab.