Event Details

5^th February at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Spring 2026 program

Prof. Avner Schlessinger, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA
AI-guided discovery of conformation-specific inhibitors for challenging protein targets

Host: Parthiban Marimuthu (Parthiban.Marimuthu@abo.fi)

Coffee and sandwich served at 11:45, first come first serve!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch and discuss with Prof. Schlessinger after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

Prof. Schlessinger is an internationally recognized leader in the field of computational biochemistry and biophysics, known for his pioneering works on membrane proteins such as ion channels (GIRK), and various membrane transporters particularly Solute Carrier Family (SLC). His research is centered on understanding the fundamental mechanisms of allosteric regulation / solute transport across membrane in these complex systems — a key aspect of cellular signaling and pharmacological modulation. To this end, his group develops and applies integrating approaches in computational chemistry and artificial intelligence, and applying these atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, enhanced sampling methods, and integrative bioinformatics approaches to characterize various disease pathways.

A hallmark of Prof. Schlessinger’s work is the development of robust and innovative protocols that allow for the quantitative description of protein dynamics and function, contributing significantly to the field’s methodological advancement. His interdisciplinary research topic will not only deepens our molecular understanding of cell-surface receptors behavior, but also informs drug discovery efforts targeting these medically relevant proteins. His work is frequently published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals and he is widely respected as a leader in the international scientific community.

Selected publications

Describing inhibitor specificity for the amino acid transporter LAT1 from metainference simulations.
Hutchinson K, Silva DB, Bohlke J, Clausen C, Thomas AA, Bonomi M, Schlessinger A.Biophys J. 2022 Dec 6;121(23):4476-4491. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.11.001.

Rational design of ASCT2 inhibitors using an integrated experimental-computational approach.
Garibsingh RA, Ndaru E, Garaeva AA, Shi Y, Zielewicz L, Zakrepine P, Bonomi M, Slotboom DJ, Paulino C, Grewer C, Schlessinger A.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Sep 14;118(37):e2104093118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2104093118.

Comprehensive Characterization of LAT1 Cholesterol-Binding Sites.
Hutchinson K, Schlessinger A.J Chem Theory Comput. 2024 Apr 23;20(8):3349-3358. doi: 10.1021/acs.jctc.3c01391. Epub 2024 Apr 10.

Genome-wide prediction of pathogenic gain- and loss-of-function variants from ensemble learning of a diverse feature set.
Stein D, Kars ME, Wu Y, Bayrak ÇS, Stenson PD, Cooper DN, Schlessinger A, Itan Y.Genome Med. 2023 Nov 30;15(1):103. doi: 10.1186/s13073-023-01261-9.

General information

• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars, print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/f/0cd08ce7e61b419b88cb/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Spring 2026 image credits to Jan Kaslin: Motor neurons (green) and newly produced cells (red) are organized around the central canal (blue cells surrounding channel that crosses the image) in the adult zebrafish spinal cord. Image taken using Leica SP8 confocal microscope.