Medicinal Chemistry (Research)

Medicinal Chemistry (Research)

Medicinal Chemistry is a research area within which you can focus your studies as part of our suite of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences research programs (MPhil, MD, PhD).

Our aim is to offer knowledge and expertise for a career in the pharmaceutical industry, academia or in primary/secondary care.

Medicinal Chemistry is a dynamic group, highly active in the synthesis and analysis of bioactive molecules. The Group occupies modern, well-equipped laboratories with state-of-the-art in-house facilities which include high-field multi-nuclear NMR, mass spectrometry, HPLC and molecular graphics.

Research themes

• Molecular modelling
• Nucleotide prodrugs (“Protides”) especially as anticancer and antiviral agents

Area of expertise

• Computer-based molecular graphics
• synthesis and analysis of bioactive molecules
• applying a wide variety of spectroscopic and other analytical methods.

Distinctive features

• The work involves close collaboration with virologists and biochemists throughout Europe, and USA.
• The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has excellent facilities for the group. It has purchased a Bruker 500MHz NMR spectrometer, a Fisons Platform II Mass Spectrometer (set up for electrospray and APCI) and several Silicon Graphics workstations and extensive software including Sybyl, Macromodel, DOCK, GRID and Oxford Molecular Software. The synthetic chemistry laboratories have recently been refurbished and each researcher has their own fume hood.
• There are excellent library facilities and computer links from all the laboratories allowing access to a wide range of databases.