Medicinal Chemistry Team Three
Team Leader: Professor Keith Jones
Location: Haddow Laboratories, Sutton
Section: Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit
Our main focus is the discovery and development of small molecule inhibitors of various proteins implicated in cancer. These proteins are usually involved in cell signalling, control of DNA transcription or as molecular chaperones controlling the conformation of oncogenic proteins. Our initial chemical structures often (but not always) come from high throughput screening of chemical libraries. All of our work involves collaboration with molecular biologists, structural biologists, biochemists and pharmacologists both from within the Institute of Cancer Research and in other research centres and universities. Our input is mainly in synthetic and medicinal chemistry but can also include chemical insight into biological problems. Current projects include: targeting phosphatase enzymes which are involved in cell signalling via dephosphorylation of key proteins; investigating possible inhibitors of enzymes involved in chromatin modification which can control DNA replication; synthesising and testing compounds which show activity in DNA mismatch repair-deficient tumours; developing a new assay system for kinases using fluorescent tags on suitable molecular scaffolds.
In the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit
