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14-Jul-2026
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a fundamental structural biology technique, often used for analysing flexible biomolecules, such as RNA and DNA. As well as answering fundamental questions about biology, NMR can also be used to study how molecules such as drugs interact with proteins. This means that protein-drug interaction data provided by NMR is extremely useful for training AI models which design new drugs and predict how they will interact with proteins.
The Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB) is an online database set up to facilitate the sharing of biomolecular NMR spectroscopy data amongst scientists, in line with FAIR principles. Previously a large amount of data generated for the BMRB was provided by the United States and Japan, each of which host their own BMRB data bank.
Following financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG), Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF) will host the new BMRB Europe data bank (BMRBe).
This only represents the first stage of a larger project, however. While at first the European BMRB will host a relatively small amount of data, there are plans to expand the types of data captured in the future to support training of AI models.
Professor Harald Schwalbe, Director of Instruct-ERIC and board member for the BMRZ explained how the European BMRB will evolve in the future:
“Beyond structural data, we will also record the reactivity of biomolecules – for example, whether a protein A is inhibited more effectively by compound B or compound C." According to Prof. Schwalbe, this information plays an important role in pharmaceutical research: "Artificial intelligence applications are becoming increasingly important in medical drug development as well as in the analysis of metabolic products – metabolomics. The BMRBe will provide a database of very carefully curated data that can be used to develop and train such AI systems.”
This advance follows a similar investment at GUF in 2023, when one of the world’s largest NMR spectrometers was installed. GUF is home to one of two 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometers available to access through Instruct. Find out more about the high-end NMR capabilities available at Frankfurt and Florence here.
