(372d) Microed and Drug Discovery

Microcrystal Electron Diffraction (MicroED) is a groundbreaking technique that utilizes the electron diffraction properties of molecules to elucidate their structure. While MicroED was initially described in 2013 for use in structural biology, it was shown to be useful for structure determination in small molecule work shortly thereafter. Not only does MicroED determine the absolute structure of a small molecule from a lyophilized powder at sub-atomic resolution, but if a drug is co-crystalized with its target protein it has been shown that the chemical interactions between the two can be visualized. These reasons, along with the fact that MicroED is much faster than traditional analytical methods for solving a structure, make MicroED a highly advantageous and sought after technique for drug discovery.