MSci students’ research published in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters
Over the last three years, medicinal chemists at GSK have been collaborating with staff and students in the School, to discover a new treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) a life threatening lung disease. The research, which was carried out by 4th yr MSci chemistry students, has now been published in a prestigious journal (DOI: 10.1021/ml5002079). The students designed and synthesised a series of novel compounds for activity against a family of biological targets called integrins, which play a key role in many biological processes. One integrin, called avb6, is believed to be pivotal to IPF disease progression. The compounds were tested at the GSK laboratories in Stevenage and a number of compounds demonstrated promising activity and selectivity e.g. compound 33S avb3, avb5, avb6, avb8 IC50 63-125nM.
The School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham has a number of highly valued partnerships with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) a global pharmaceutical company, including the construction of the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry, postgraduate research in organic synthesis and undergraduate teaching in medicinal chemistry. This project is supervised by Dr. Jonathan Fray and Tom McInally of the School of Chemistry in collaboration with Dr. Simon Macdonald and colleagues from GSK.
Further research to optimise the biological properties of the lead compounds is being carried out by a new cohort of students at Nottingham.
Posted on Thursday 16th October 2014