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- The MD4SB consortium is meeting today at our institute for the kick-off of the four-year European project, coordinated by IRB Barcelona.
- With €10 million Horizon Europe funding, MD4SB brings together 25 partners from eight countries to make molecular dynamics data and tools more accessible and reusable across Europe.
- The meeting will align the consortium around the project’s scientific and technical work and define priorities for its first year.
Representatives of the MD4SB (Molecular Dynamics for Structure-based Biology) consortium are meeting today at IRB Barcelona for the project’s kick-off meeting, marking the start of the collaborative work of the four-year European initiative.
Coordinated by IRB Barcelona and funded with €10 million through Horizon Europe, MD4SB brings together 25 partners from eight countries. The project aims to integrate molecular dynamics data and tools into three major European Research Infrastructures: Instruct-ERIC, ELIXIR and EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC, and connect them with leading European supercomputing centres.
Molecular dynamics simulations allow the study of how proteins and other biological molecules move, change shape, and interact over time, providing information that complements the static structures traditionally used in structural biology. MD4SB aims to make these data and computational tools easier to access, share and reuse, supporting research ranging from fundamental structural biology to artificial intelligence and drug discovery.
The meeting is opened by Dr. Modesto Orozco, Head of the Molecular Modelling and Bioinformatics Laboratory at IRB Barcelona and coordinator of MD4SB. Throughout the day, partners will address the different components of the project, including molecular dynamics data repositories, integration with European research infrastructures, innovative drug design, FAIR data, validation through scientific use cases, training and stakeholder engagement. The programme also includes a European Commission perspective and a joint discussion to establish the timeline and objectives for the first year of the project.
About IRB Barcelona
The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) pursues a society free of disease. To this end, it conducts multidisciplinary research of excellence to cure cancer and other diseases linked to ageing. It establishes technology transfer agreements with the pharmaceutical industry and major hospitals to bring research results closer to society, and organises a range of science outreach activities to engage the public in an open dialogue. IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 researchers and more than 30 nationalities. Recognised as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence since 2011, IRB Barcelona is a CERCA centre and member of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).
