Computational Biology and Chemogenomics Team
Team Leader: Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani
Location: Haddow Laboratories, Sutton
Section: Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit
canSAR pre-release now available
Cancer drug discovery efforts are faced with exponential growth of genomic, biochemical and screening data, fueled by increasingly powerful and smarter technologies. These data present significant opportunities for drug discovery, but also immense challenges. Particularly, how can we extract the ‘gold nuggets’ out of the glut of large-scale data. An urgent need exists to effectively integrate and utilise these diverse data in the development of new drugs.
The team’s main aim is to empower translational research in cancer drug discovery by using computational techniques to bridge the gap between biological, chemical and clinical knowledge.
We develop novel computational tools and approaches to effectively integrate biological, chemical and clinical data at large scale. These tools are employed in the following areas:
- Utilising chemogenomics data to support decision-making in the drug discovery process, from target selection to lead identification. This should help identify opportunities and risks early on in the process thus helping streamline novel drug discovery
- Utilising expression, RNAi screening and GWAS data to identify disease
- Identifying patterns and rules in targets and networks which yield successful drugs, and applying these rules specifically in the complex field of cancer drug discovery
- Leveraging large scale structural biology and Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) data in determining target tractability and in aiding drug design
- Understanding rules governing ligand binding and target/ligand selectivity and using them predicatively in assessing target and compound development
- Utilising published clinical outcome data to enhance the assessment and understanding of drug/target activities
- Aiding experiments by providing information on suitable cellular test system and chemical probes.
These aims will be achieved through three major areas of research and development within the group:
- Integrated chemogenomics workbench, canSAR
- Objective target assessment and the Novel Target Initiative
- 3-D structural analysis
In the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit
