GDRE

29 August 2011

Historical Background Today, the European scientific community working on Ca2+ signalling is very active but scattered The first national network devoted to calcium signalling appeared in France in 2004 with the CNRS GDR 2688 which includes 20 teams and brings together researchers from plant and animal communities through meetings, participation in seminars and other workshops. Therefore, the foundations are there to build a network gathering the best European experts in the calcium signalling field. Drug discovery and development are based on the paradigm “one gene, one protein, one function, one pathology”. The stagnation in new drugs development, despite a near-exponential increase in investment, is due to limitations of this paradigm. It is important to explore other concepts and in particular to seek for molecules active on signalling networks rather than on identified targets. To be able to quantitatively model the calcium signalling pathway in a given cell type and in a specific physiological state remains a challenge which, will be the cornerstone in the search for drugs acting on a regulatory pathway. By gathering and structuring the knowledge of the best European experts in the calcium signalling field, we aim to establish this in silico approach that would open a new era in drug discovery

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