Victor Jun Yu Lim is the Molecular Pharmacology Highlighted Trainee Author for the February 2023 issue. He is currently a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Philipps-University, Marburg, under the guidance of Dr. Peter Kolb. The Molecular Pharmacology article that earned him the honor of being selected as Highlighted Trainee Author is titled: “The Isoleucine at Position 118 in Transmembrane 2 is Responsible for the Selectivity of Xamoterol, Nebivolol and ICI89406 for the Human β1-Adrenoceptor ” and is available at: https://doi.org/10.1124/molpharm.122.000583.

Mr. Lim mainly works with computational methods to solve and understand pharmacological and biological phenomena, specializing in G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These methods include modeling of GPCRs with different ligands and transducers and performing molecular dynamics simulations on them to study their activation responses under different conditions. Such calculations provide hypotheses and insights for further in vitro testing. For example, in this publication, Mr. Lim sought to understand how a single residue is responsible for the selectivity of xamoterol between the beta-1 and beta-2 adrenergic receptors.

Mr. Lim continues to work on GPCRs, like the beta-2 adrenergic receptor and the thromboxane receptor, studying how different ligands and conditions trigger different activation responses. This is done using molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations to estimate the relative stability between different activation states of the receptor. These calculations provide the basis for further studies into understanding how receptors behave with different ligands.

Outside of his work, Victor enjoys playing badminton and fishing. He also likes to keep up with the latest computational devices.