× Medicines Discovery Catapult

Curating some exciting new approaches to medicines discovery

Every drug discovery project starts with a hypothesis: that changing the activity or level of a certain protein will help to alleviate the symptoms or the underlying cause of disease. Typically, extensive experimental work is then undertaken, to identify a suitable drug molecule and to build confidence in the target-to-disease hypothesis. However, ultimately a project […]

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Meet Kepa Burusco-Goni – Molecular Science Informatician

Tell us a bit about the team you work in? I work in the Cheminformatics team; there’s four of us – Anna, Charlie and Andrew. We mainly work in the cheminformatics field, but also cover areas of bioinformatics and molecular modelling. We use ligand- and structure-based drug design approaches, molecular descriptors, databases, artificial intelligence plus […]

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Patient power is the fuel of the next round of medicines discovery development

The UK life sciences sector is vibrant. It is alive and well. The UK has an immense legacy in this space. A legacy of being a pioneer; of being a global provider of innovation; of knowledge; of wisdom, and of industrial process. 25% of the world’s top 100 selling medicines were discovered in the UK […]

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FFPE workflow: From block to spectra

Over the past two decades Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MALDI-MSI) has been widely applied in biomedical science and life sciences. MALDI-MSI of biological tissue was initially developed by Richard Caprioli in 1997 following on from the pioneering work of Bernard Spengler. The technology allows for untargeted measurement of peptides and proteins […]

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Meet Anna Pallo – Cheminformatician

Which team do you work in and what’s your role in this team? I work in the Cheminformatics Team lead by Andrew Pannifer. We take large chemical databases and apply data science to them to answer questions about drug-design. Currently, I’m working on an exciting project with clinical trials and patent data as part of […]

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Meet Dr Andrew Pannifer – Head of Cheminformatics

What team do you work in, and what does this team do? I work in the Cheminformatics team with Anna, Charlie, and Kepa. The role of our team is to use the massive amounts of chemical, biochemical, protein, and chemical structural data out there to help answer questions that drug discovery organisations encounter: Are there […]

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The value of computational chemistry

With the increasing pressure to drive efficiencies in the drug discovery process, innovative approaches using computational chemistry are delivering proven results, particularly in the areas of lead identification and optimisation. However, maintaining an in-house team is often a luxury and there is an increasing trend to outsource computational chemistry in order to benefit from the […]

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What is Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS)?

Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is an autoimmune disease in which pathogenic autoantibodies cause development of clots, strokes and/or recurrent miscarriages. APS is the main cause of strokes in people under 50 years old and a major cause of pregnancy loss. Treatment options for APS are very limited. Importantly corticosteroids and immunosuppressive drugs are not effective in […]

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Using Electron Microscopy (EM) in drug discovery

Why Electron Microscopy? 88% of the 210 drugs granted FDA approval between 2010 and 2016 were informed by structural biology. Traditionally structural biology has been underpinned by X-ray crystallography and to a lesser extent NMR. However, significant improvements in the field of Electron Microscopy (EM) has provided a powerful approach to studying protein structure. Traditionally […]

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