CNRS Research director at the Institute of Analytical Sciences, Guido Pintacuda is one of the 3 laureates of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize 2016 in Chemistry*. He is recognized “for his elegant methodological advances in solid state NMR spectroscopy, including advances in proton detection, and for insightful applications to challenging biological systems”.
The prize will be awarded at the University of Tel Aviv, during a mini-conference that will be held in honor of the laureates on February 28th 2017.
Guido Pintacuda has developed a comprehensive and reliable solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance methodology that provides rapid and robust access to high-resolution structural information on heterogeneous biomolecular samples in native environments, leading to the determination of structure-activity relations in key biomolecular problems. His research and accomplishments are opening tremendous new perspectives in structural biology and increase the impact of NMR for the investigation of a variety of key (otherwise non-accessible) systems such as membrane-bound drug targets, viral capsid assemblies, fibrils and metalloenzymes (in PNAS 2016 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1602248113 and Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016 doi:10.1002/anie.201607084 for some recent examples).
Guido Pintacuda is Principal Investigator in several projects funded by national and European agencies, and in 2015 he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant on “Structure of paramagnetic integral membrane metalloproteins by MAS-NMR”, where he is pursuing measurements of structure-activity relationships in metal-containing integral membrane proteins, specifically by combining methods for determining global structure and dynamics with methods for the determination of the electronic features of metal ions. He is also the coordinator of the European Initial Training Network “pNMR : Pushing the Envelope of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for Paramagnetic Systems” (FP7 ITN -2012-2016), comprising 13 academic and industrial partners, with a deep involvement in training and dissemination actions at the EU level.
*The Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Physical Sciences awarded alternatively in the fields of Chemistry and Physics at Tel Aviv University is intended to encourage dedication to science, originality and excellence by rewarding outstanding young scientists. The research field for 2016 is Magnetic Resonance.