PETRA III Science Seminar | Why we itch: a structural exploration of the Interleukin-31 cyt

by Yehudi Bloch (EMBL)

Tuesday 7 Nov 2023, 14:15 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

Online

The EMBL beamlines at the PETRA III storage ring at DESY have been a mainstay for the Belgian BAG and the Savvides group at the University of Ghent since their commissioning. The group has a vested interest in protein complexes involved in inflammation, immunity, and cancer. This presentation will cover my postdoctoral work in the Savvides group. 

I will present the structural analysis of the assembly process of the human Interleukin-31 signaling complex, obtained primarily through X-ray crystallography, and illustrate its activation and inhibition principles. Interleukin-31 is known to cause acute itch and is therefore an emerging clinical target in pruritic diseases, while already being a well-established target in the veterinary world.