Pioneering Therapeutics

We harness the wide breadth of cross-cutting science to harmonise and support key research activities aligned to modern-day therapeutics discovery and development. Projects includes identifying new approaches for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer angiogenesis, as well as immunotherapy cancer treatments and eye drops that reverse degeneration of sight. 

We are involved in all aspects of pre-clinical therapeutic discovery including that of small molecule drugs, biopharmaceutics and vaccines. More broadly we have expertise in biomarker identification, medicine chemistry and high-throughput screening, DMPK, pre-clinical models and advanced drug delivery. 

Our researchers focus on a number of therapeutic challenges including the identification of new selective ligands for G-protein coupled receptors using fluorescence; improving the targeting and efficacy of brain and breast cancer drugs using protein nanocages; addressing the developing issue of antimicrobial resistance through the identification of new antibiotics for future use in both human and animal health; combining structural biology, in silico methods and organic synthesis to generate compounds that are active against respiratory diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and tuberculosis.

Researchers within the School of Pharmacy undertake pioneering research within the Division of Biomolecular Science and Medicinal Chemistry, aimed at understanding biological processes, and applied research in the areas of target identification, bioassay development and drug discovery. Biological chemistry research within the School of Chemistry involves the use of analytical, computational and synthetic chemistry methods, together with those in molecular and structural biology to investigate, disrupt and harness a wide range of biological systems from single peptides and proteins through to bacteria, plants and higher animals. Other research groups with substantial therapeutics research strands include those working on vaccines (Lindy Durrant and Ruth Griffin) and Clostridium Directed Enzyme Prodrug Therapy (Nigel Minton).

Research project highlights

Key areas of research include the development of computational tools, fluorescent ligands andcomplementary structural studies to aid drug discovery against specific G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) subtypes involved in cardiovascular or respiratory diseases and cancer angiogenesis. This research involves other groups in the Queen’s Medical Centre and at Birmingham University through the joint Centre for Membrane Proteins and Receptors (COMPARE) and has received substantial funding from the MRC. Fluorescent ligands have also been developed against the P2Y2 receptor.

A variety of antimicrobial agents have been identified and their mode of action defined using structural biology techniques. These include LY256 an agent that is effective against Clostridioides (previously Clostridium) difficile through an MRC DPFS grant, the development of quinolones that inhibit the virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms through interference of the biosynthesis of their quorum sensing molecules through the SENBIOTAR programme. Campylobacter jejuni colonise the gastrointestinal tracts of large numbers of poultry and can cause food poisoning if not killed during cooking. Researchers in the Biodiscovery Institute have developed several iron amino acid complexes that significantly reduce the colonisation and this effect has been scaled-up to large field trials.

Drug targeting and delivery are active areas of research, building on the widely used brain cancer drug, temozolomide, developed by Prof. Malcolm Stevens, emeritus Professor at Nottingham.  New analogues that are active against resistant glioblastoma are being developed and improved targeting with reduced side effects are being investigated through the use of a protein nanocapsule as a ‘trojan horse’ delivery vehicle. Other research is looking at targeted delivery to the lymphatic system of anticancer and antiviral agents, and of prodrugs for targeting the lungs.

Our researchers

Search the table below to find out more about our researchers. You are able to filter the table by searching for names, keywords, and techniques.

 

Full list of our researchers

Name	Research keywords	Research techniques
Cinzia Allegrucci	Cancer, stem cells, epigenetics, disease modelling, genetics	iPSC technology, 3D cell culture models, in vitro assays, epigenetic analysis
Steve Atkinson	Yersinia pestis, plague, black death, molecular genetic pathways, antibiotic resistance	Plague insect infection, soil infection, molecular genetics of plague
Tracey D Bradshaw	Cancer, pharmacology, drug discovery, apoferritin, molecular mechanisms	Tissue culture, cell biology, MTT, western blot, flow cytometry
Weng Chan	Antibiotic discovery, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, anti-virulence, peptide chemistry	Solid-phase peptide synthesis, organic synthesis, in vitro microbial assay, drug design
Rachel Clifford	Respiratory, Epigenetics, Transcriptional regulation, DNA methylation, inhaled exposures	Primary cell culture, methylomics, histone modification analysis, transcriptomics, molecular biology
Beth Coyle	Paediatric brain tumours, resistance, metastasis, tumour microenvironment	3D cell culture, apoptosis, cytotoxicity, migration assays
Madhumita Dandapani	Childhood cancer, brain tumours, cancer metabolism, clinical trials, global health	Immunohistochemistry, western blotting, cell culture, multi-omics, systematic reviews
Chris Denning	Drug discovery, cancer, thrombosis, protein kinase, protein interactions	Biochemical assays, cellular assays, enzyme assays, assay development, high throughput screening
Chris Denning	Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), heart/ cardiovascular disease, drug discovery and evaluation, regenerative medicine	Cardiovascular lineage differentiation, CRISPR engineering, phenotype-genotype correlations, automation
James Dixon	Gene therapy, gene editing, vaccines, nucleic acid delivery, regenerative medicine	Genetic engineering/ editing, nanoformulation, reporter assays, particle characterisation, biomaterials
Lindy Durrant	Cancer immunotherapy, vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, T cells, post-translational modifications	Production of antibodies, vaccine design, cancer animal models, T cell assays, ELISA
Isioma Egbuniwe	Bile duct cancer, tumour microenvironment, T and B cells, lymphatics, digital pathology	Primary cell isolation and culture, multi-parameter flow cytometry, 3D tumour-immune cell co-culture systems, histopathology, image analysis
Jonas Emsley	Structural biology, protein crystallography, protease structure, receptor structure, drug development	Protein crystallography, isothermal titration calorimetry, surface plasmon resonance, molecular docking
Mattea Finelli	Neurodegenerative diseases, redox mechanisms, oxidative and nitrosative stresses, proteomics, post-translational modifications of proteins	Quantitative/ redox/ PTMs proteomics, cell- and recombinant protein-based assays, stem cell derived disease models, various cell cultures (cortical, cerebellar, hippocampal, DRG, motor neurons)
Pavel Gershkovich	Biopharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, drug delivery, intestinal lymphatic transport, targeted biodistribution	Bioanalysis, HPLC, in vivo pharmacokinetics, in vivo biodistribution, pharmacokinetic modelling and simulation
Anna Grabowska	Cancer models, tumour microenvironment, target validation, drug screening, drug delivery	Cancer modelling, 3D tissue culture, quantitative PCR, immunohistochemistry
Ruth Griffin	Oral vaccine delivery systems, infectious diseases	Gene cloning and protein purification, formulation, in vivo immunogenicity and challenge studies, antibody assays
Nicholas Hannan	Stem cells, disease modelling, respiratory disease, liver disease, inflammatory bowel disease	Stem cell differentiation, cell phenotyping, gene editing, CRISPR base editing, organoids
John Heap	Engineering biology/ synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, biocatalysis, enzyme evolution	Engineering biology/ synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, biocatalysis, enzyme evolution
Andrew Jackson	Cancer, immunotherapy, dendritic Cells (DC), T-cells, signalling	Isolation of rare primary leukocyte subsets, flow cytometry, small molecule kinase inhibitors, multi-cellular immune culture systems
Victoria James	Extracellular vesicles, RNA biology, cancer metastasis, epigenetics, inter-cellular communication	Nanoparticle biology, RNA biology, cell biology, epigenetics
Sheela Jayaraman	Gene expression, chromatin, PRH/ HHEX, cell signalling, transcriptomics	RNAseq, western blotting, subcloning, chromatin immunoprecipitation
Jennie Jeyapalan	Epigenomics, prostate cancer, transcriptional regulation, splicing	Genomics, RNA seq analysis, molecular biology, cell culture
Simon Johnson	Tissue remodelling, proteases, extracellular matrix, rare lung disease, drug repurposing	Protease assays, complex cell culture, molecular pathology
Barrie Kellam	Medicinal chemistry, fluorescent ligands, G protein-coupled receptors, drug discovery	Medicinal chemistry, molecular modelling, biospectroscopy, HPLC, fluorescence Imaging
Charlie Laughton	Biomolecular structure,   molecular recognition, drug design, formulation design,   molecular dynamics	Molecular dynamics simulations,     protein structure prediction, virtual screening, machine learning, software development
Anbarasu Lourdusamy	Brain cancer, childhood cancer, systems biology, artificial intelligence, big data	Bioinformatics, NGS (RNAseq, ChIPseq, scRNAseq and ATAC-seq) data analysis, machine learning, statistics, high-performance computing
Srinvasan Madhusudan	Medical oncology, clinical trials, breast cancer, DNA repair therapeutics, drug discovery	DNA repair assays, immunohistochemical techniques, clinical trial methodologies
Stewart Martin	Breast, brain and ovarian cancer, radiotherapy, metastasis, novel drugs, redox homeostasis, calpain proteases	Radiation biology, immunohistochemistry, cell and molecular biology
Alvaro Mata	Biomaterials, tissue engineering, regenerative materials, in vitro models, biomineralization	Self-assembly, bioprinting, electron microscopy
Alan McIntyre	Cancer, hypoxia (low oxygen), acidosis, transcription, epigenetics, angiogenesis	CRISPR CAS9, RNA-SEQ, ChIP, tumour cell phenotype assays, hypoxia and acidosis investigations
Shailesh N. Mistry	Drug discovery, chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), allosteric modulators	Medicinal chemistry, compound purification, spectroscopic analysis, ligand/ structure-based drug discovery
Poulam Patel	Melanoma, renal cancer, cancer immunotherapy, clinical trials, translational medicine	Clinical trials, immune assays,
Ruman Rahman	Brain cancer, cancer heterogeneity, cancer metabolism, biomaterial-based drug delivery, integrated genomics	3D primary tumour culture, qRT-PCR, gene microarrays/ knockdowns, Western blotting,
Judith Ramage	Cancer, immunology, T-lymphocytes, vaccines	Multiplex fluorescence immunohistochemistry, T-cell assays
Frankie Rawson	Wireless bioelectronics, bioelectricity, electrochemistry, bionanotechnology, bioelectronic medicine	SECM-AFM, voltammtery, amperomerty
Timothy Ritzmann	Childhood brain tumours, brain tumour immunity, childhood cancer, ependymoma, cancer recurrence	RNA-sequencing, multiplex immunofluorescence, immunohistochemistry, clinical data analysis, childhood brain tumour clinical trials
Karen Robinson	Helicobacter pylori, antimicrobial resistance, infection and immunity, gastric cancer, bacterial virulence	Flow cytometry, real-time PCR, immunohistochemistry, antimicrobial sensitivity testing, immune cell purification and culture
Felicity Rose	Biointerfaces; biomaterials; peptide materials; hydrogels; computational material science	Surface modification and analysis; polymerisation kinetics; light and enzyme responsive materials; material characterisation
Ian Sayers	Molecular, genetic and cellular mechanisms underlying asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, virus-host interactions, stratified medicine	Gene discovery, primary airway cell and tissue models, functional genetics, transcriptomics, patient translational studies
Claire Seedhouse	Blood cancers, drug resistance, stem cells, dormancy, functional consequences of mutations	Quantitative PCR, flow cytometry, primary suspension cultures
Abdol Shams-Nateri	Adult stem cells and cancer, precision oncology/ personalized cancer treatments, intra-tumour heterogeneity, cell signalling and transcription, ubiquitin proteasome system and F-box proteins	3D Organoids and explants models, gene targeting and transgenics, CRISPR-Cas gene editing systems, epithelial and hematopoietic stem cells assays
Stuart Smith	High grade glioma, low grade glioma, childhood brain tumours, drug delivery, tumour heterogeneity	rtPCR, RNA methylation, IHC, FACS
Ian Spendlove	Controlling iTreg, engineering T cells, cloning TCRs from cancer patients, cancer survivors, anti cancer antibodies.	TCR cloning/ transduction, CRISPR-Cas9 of primary leukocytes, flow sorting rare T cells, differentiating iTreg, autophagosome purification.
Michael Stocks	Medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, cancer, antimicrobial resistance, prodrugs	Synthesis, drug optimisation, drug delivery, medicinal chemistry
Sarah Storr	Cancer, breast cancer, DARPP-32, calpain, cell signalling	Cell culture, bioinformatics, immunohistochemistry, molecular biology, protein purification
Amanda Tatler	Respiratory disease, tissue remodelling, fibrosis, matrix, 3D models	Precision cut tissue slices, in vivo respiratory models, molecular biology, TGFb activation assays, immunohistochemistry/ immunofluorescence
Neil Thomas	Enzyme mechanism, enzyme inhibitors, biopharmaceutics, silk and other protein-based biomaterials, nanobiotechnology	Bioconjugation, chemiluminescence, un-natural amino acid mutagenesis, enzyme activity assays, enzyme inhibitor design
Alex Thompson	Blood cancer, stem cell technologies, pre-clinical evaluation, next-generation models, drug discovery	In vivo modelling, iPSC maintenance and differentiation, haematopoiesis, colony-forming assays, gene expression profiling
Lisa White	Regenerative medicine, biomaterials, extracellular matrix, hydrogels, microparticles	Decellularization, micro x-ray computed tomography, mammalian cell culture, biomaterials characterisation, supercritical CO2
Huw Williams	NMR, molecular interactions, molecular structure, analytical, kinetics	NMR, molecular interactions, solid state NMR, molecular dynamics, molecular structure
Paul Williams	Quorum sensing, biofilms, bacteria, biomaterials, antimicrobial agents	Bacterial genetics, bacterial culture, antimicrobial assays, quorum sensing assays, microscopy/ imaging

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