Medicinal Chemistry Group

About Us

Our research covers a range of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology areas focused on malaria, TB and filariasis. Our approach involves a broad range of synthesis approaches, modelling and biological testing. Much of our work is carried with collaborators in the Department of Pharmacology as well as partnerships with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (Professors Ward, Biagini and Taylor) and industrial partner groups including Astra Zeneca, Eisai (Boston, USA) and GSK (Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain). More recently we have also initiated medicinal chemistry programmes in neuropathic pain and pancreatitis.

History of the Group

The University of Liverpool Medicinal Chemistry group along with collaborators from the Liverpool School of Tropical medicine have been involved in discovery and development of compounds for treating diseases for over 25 years delivering 2 treatments into man (Isoquine, AWZ 1066) and multiple late lead and preclinical candidates against Malaria and Tuberculosis. During this period we have successfully worked with pharma, including GSK, Astra Zeneca, Pfizer, Eisai and Abbvie. We work in number of drug development projects that are currently at the lead optimisation phase (funded by the Wellcome Trust, MMV, Gates Foundation and the Medical Research Council (MRC)). The Liverpool team has also been involved in large drug-development consortia such as the EU funded Antimal, Artemip, CRIMALDI and AWOL drug development programmes.

Capabilities

We have proven experience in design and synthesis of novel compounds for the treatment of diseases. Molecular design and optimisation is integrated with computational chemistry, biological assay data and compound physicochemical properties.

We are situated within the Department of Chemistry. We are top 10 in the UK for world leading (4*) research and environment, and 3rd in the UK for world leading (4*) impact, as the results of REF2021 show. We are one of the top places in the UK for chemistry research. We are well equipped with modern synthetic laboratories for small molecule and peptide drug discovery, and have access to the necessary hardware and software for molecular modelling including access to Liverpool's high performance computing clusters. 

 

Back to: Department of Chemistry

Medicinal Chemistry funding

 

Our research covers a range of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology areas focused on malaria, TB and filariasis. Our approach involves a broad range of synthesis approaches, modeling and biological testing. Much of our work is carried with collaborators including Professor Kevin Park (MRC CDSS, Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool), as well as partnerships with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (Professors Ward, Biagini and Taylor) and industrial partner groups including Astra Zeneca, Eisai (Boston, USA) and GSK (Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain). More recently we have also initiated medicinal chemistry programmes in neuropathic pain and pancreatitis.