Our research is focussed on the design and synthesis of safe and effective drugs for the treatment of cancer by targeting specific proteins and pathways implicated in the disease. This work is conducted in close collaboration with clinical, genetics, biology and drug metabolism experts at the ICR. The team works at all stages of the drug discovery process from the initial phases of target identification and hit discovery through to clinical candidate selection.

Hit generation is achieved by high-throughput screening of in-house and external compound collections, fragment-based hit discovery, virtual screening and rational design. Lead optimisation of these hits is reliant upon the synthetic and medicinal chemistry skills in the team. Chemists work in multidisciplinary project teams and have an excellent opportunity to build expertise in the practice of a wide range of medicinal and synthetic chemistry skills.

Current projects include the optimisation of inhibitors of mitotic kinases using structure-based design and the discovery and development of inhibitors of the WNT pathway in collaboration with Merck Serono.  In addition, we are actively developing fragment-based hit discovery at the ICR and enhancing our expertise in in silico medicinal chemistry through the work of the In Silico Medicinal Chemistry group.

Aim

• The design and synthesis of safe and effective drugs for the treatment of cancer.