Cambridge Centre for Dr Maria Marti Solano
Group Leader - Royal Society University Research Fellow
Contact information
Department of Pharmacology
Tennis Court Road
Cambridge
CB2 1PD
United Kingdom
Research interests
G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are an extensive family of proteins found across human cells and tissues. Individual family members detect different signals reaching the cell membrane (such as light, taste, neurotransmitters, or hormones) and convey their messages to signalling partners that activate a variety of physiological responses inside our cells. Due to their capacity to regulate cell responses, GPCRs have become the most common drug targets. However, there are still many aspects of GPCR function that remain unresolved, thus hampering our understanding of the key molecular mechanisms that underlie receptor signalling in cell physiology and in therapeutic responses.
In our group, we apply a range of computational biology techniques to mine, integrate and analyse structural, multi-omics, network biology, cell signalling, and pharmacogenomics data. This integrative approach allows us to interrogate GPCR pathways from a systems perspective, revealing general principles governing cell signalling in health and disease that can be experimentally tested by our in house and external collaborators.
Keywords
Computational biology, Drug discovery, Genomics, Molecular dynamics, Molecular mechanisms of disease, Network analysis, Personalised medicine, RNA-seq
Publications
Selected publications
Marti-Solano M*, Crilly SE, Malinverni D, Munk C, Harris M, Pearce A, et al. Combinatorial GPCR isoform expression impacts signalling and drug responses. Nature 587(7835):650-656 (2020). *co-corresponding author.
Yu X, Nagai J, Marti-Solano M, Soto JS, Coppola G, Babu MM, et al. Context-Specific Striatal Astrocyte Molecular Responses Are Phenotypically Exploitable. Neuron 108(6):1146-1162.e10 (2020).
Rodríguez-Espigares I, Torrens-Fontanals M, Tiemann JKS, Aranda-García D, Ramírez-Anguita JM, Stepniewski TM, Worp N, Varela-Rial A, Morales-Pastor A, Medel-Lacruz B, Pándy-Szekeres G, Mayol E, Giorgino T, Carlsson J, Deupi X, Filipek S, Filizola M, Gómez-Tamayo JC, Gonzalez A, Gutiérrez-de-Terán H, Jiménez-Rosés M, Jespers W, Kapla J, Khelashvili G, Kolb P, Latek D, Marti-Solano M, Matricon P, Matsoukas MT, Miszta P, Olivella M, Perez-Benito L, Provasi D, Ríos S, Torrecillas IR, Sallander J, Sztyler A, Vasile S, Weinstein H, Zachariae U, Hildebrand PW, de Fabritiis G, Sanz F, Gloriam, DE, Cordomi A, Guixà-González R, Selent J. GPCRmd uncovers the dynamics of the 3D-GPCRome. Nat Methods 17(8):777-787 (2020).
Martí-Solano M, Schmidt D, Kolb P, Selent J. Drugging specific conformational states of GPCRs: challenges and opportunities for computational chemistry. Drug Discov Today 21(4): 625-31 (2016).