Diamond-II Webinar: K04 Beamline Rebuild for Ultra-XChem

Nov 16. till Nov 16.

Diamond-II Webinar: K04 Beamline Rebuild for Ultra-XChem

Structural and chemical biologists and medicinal chemists are warmly invited to this webinar, which will describe the rebuilding of the I04-1 as K04 for Diamond-II. The project will achieve ultra-high throughput XChem fragment screening and thereby help drive routine and rapid pre-clinical impact in structure-based drug discovery and chemical biology. Diamond-II is a coordinated programme of development that includes a major upgrade of the storage ring to deliver low emittance at higher energy, along with a range of rebuilt and enhanced beamlines. The K04/XChem project is part of a transformational change for the MX and XChem communities, and attendance and feedback are highly encouraged.

Date
16/11/20202020-11-16T16:00:00 - 16/11/20202020-11-16T17:00:00
Time
16:00 - 17:00
Location
Online via Zoom

About the K04 U-XChem project

The K04 U-XChem flagship builds on the success and oversubscription of the XChem fragment screening facility, developed in tandem with the evolution of beamline I04-1. The facility provides a world-unique offering for structure-based drug design, which is in heavy academic and industrial demand, with the resilience to support significant COVID work during lockdown. 

The Diamond-II machine configuration necessitates removing beamline I04-1, providing the opportunity to rebuild it on the new K04 straight, delivering a beamline of vastly increased flux and brilliance, along with extreme automation.  The resulting order-of-magnitude increase in throughput will fundamentally shift the scientific scope of crystallographic fragment screening. On the one hand, a far larger range of classes of drug targets will become viable, even when diffraction is weak. On the other hand, routinely large experiments will help achieve the coming revolution in rational drug discovery, by allowing all key interactions and conformations to be observed in 3D up front, providing the raw data that future algorithms will be able to exploit to design clinic-ready drug candidates from scratch.

A proof-of-concept demonstration of how ultra high throughput XChem would assist this long-sought but ever more realistic ambition, came from recent COVID-19 XChem experiments. The rich data from a very large screen was key to the premise of the COVID Moonshot, namely to rapidly achieve antiviral pre-clinical candidates.  Supporting methodologies are in active development through several strategic partnerships, including the Rosalind Franklin Institute (Next Generation Chemistry theme), EUbOpen, and the Fragalysis project.

Joining and registering interest

Please also sign up to our K04/XChem Flagship Interest Group by clicking the button below; this will allow us to record your interest, and you can also opt in to receive updates by email:

I'd like to join the Interest Group

You are also welcome to contact the project lead Frank von Delft, or chair of the User Working Group John Barker, with any questions or further feedback.

For questions about the webinar itself, please email the Diamond Events Team.

Background

Find out more about the Diamond-II programme here, and download the Diamond-II | Advancing Science science case here.

This webinar forms part of the second stage of user engagement for the Group's proposal. In 2018, an introductory workshop was held for users to discuss the project's potential benefits for research and to help further develop the science case and direction for the machine upgrade. You can revisit the event page here.

The business case for flagship beamline projects was presented to the Diamond Science Advisory Committee (SAC) and Diamond Industrial Science Committee (DISCo) in May, who recommended that a full business case should be put together for each new beamline or upgrade proposal. The Diamond team for each proposal has formed its own User Working Group with representatives from the User Community, who will build the finalised business cases, to be put forward to SAC/DISCo for consideration and prioritisation in December 2020.

User engagement and input is therefore vital for this proposal to build the strongest case possible and ensure key capabilities are captured.

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