Research Interests

Anti-Infective Drug Design

Our research is in the design and synthesis of potential drugs. The particular targets that we are pursing are in the therapeutic areas of Tropical Medicine and Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies.

The mainstay of the work carried out by my research group is synthetic medicinal chemistry, using modern synthetic methodology in well equipped laboratories. The drug design process involves "lead generation". Currently we make extensive use of molecular modelling to achieve this. Once compounds have been made they are assessed for activity by a variety of collaborators.

My research group is part of the Division of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Microbiology.

Tropical Medicine

In particular we are interested in the organisms which give rise to African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, leishmaniasis and malaria. We have a number of therapeutic targets that are under investigation. These include the enzymes dihydrofolate reductase, inhibition of steroid biosynthesis, selective delivery of compounds using nucleoside transporters and several other enzymatic targets.

Transmissible Spongiform Encephalophathies

We are interested in looking for potential leads to prevent conversion of normal prion protein to abnormal prion protein.