David Lab

The focus of our research is the field of Synthetic Biology/Medical Biotechnology for next generation drug discovery and production. The goal is to further develop baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as an advanced drug discovery and production platform.

Leader: Florian David, Associate Professor

Research group leader, Associate Professor Florian David

High throughput compound screenings using yeast

Unlike standard high throughput compound screens, we are employing yeast itself to produce millions of different structures while simultaneously selecting for potent drug leads. The specific goal is to find and produce new drug modalities with tailored properties.

Within our research we focus on the development of advanced synthetic biology tools like intracellular biosensors, enabling high throughput screening approaches.

Optimizing yeast cell factories

A parallel focus is on optimizing yeast cell factories for production of certain target molecules. Fine tuning of gene expression, proteins and metabolism is needed to increase production capacities. For example, combining genetic libraries and metabolite responsive biosensors enables us to selectively screen for better performing production strains.