× Medicines Discovery Catapult

Meet Gayle Marshall – Lead Scientist (Biomarkers)

Which team do you work in and what does that team do? I work in the Biomarkers team within Discovery. Biomarkers is such a broad term; many of us do biomarkers such as microscopy, mass spec and pre-clinical imaging. My motivation has always been about implementing these biomarkers to support drug development from late stage […]

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Target Identification with informatics and data mining

What is druggability? Central to the drug discovery process is the identification of a suitable efficacious target, and the ability of a novel drug-like compound to bind to and modify that target. A successful drug target needs to demonstrate two key properties: it has to have a site capable of binding drug-like molecules, i.e. a […]

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Target discovery at AstraZeneca: discovery, identification, and novel targets

Both the pharmaceutical industry and non-industry researchers spend a lot of time analysing why there are high attrition rates in the drug development process. Attempts to reduce the number of efficacy- and safety-related failures in the drug discovery phase led AstraZeneca to developing the 5R Framework: Right target Right tissue Right safety Right patients Right […]

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Meet Gemma Forrest – Pre-Clinical Scientist

Which team do you work in and what does that team do? I work in Discovery, as part of the Pre-clinical Imaging team – all of my work involves the use of animals, so my particular role is quite specific. What’s your role within your team? I am a Pre-Clinical Scientist. My role focuses on […]

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Nucleic Acid Therapeutics – Delivered

Clinical and commercial progress Nucleic acid therapeutics, which address the underlying causes of disease at the gene and RNA levels, have been on the rise in recent years. CRISPR and mRNA therapies have now entered clinical development, with a major therapeutic area focus on oncology and hematology (gene-editing and mRNA therapies), as well as infectious […]

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PROTAC Assays – Successfully measuring Protein Degradation

PROTAC (PROteolysis TArgeting Chimera) is one of the hottest topics in drug discovery today as it is a highly promising new approach to targeted therapy. It offers several advantages over traditional occupancy-based drugs, with a potential to target the ‘undruggable’ proteome. Read our blog below to learn more about PROTAC and some assays that can […]

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Meet Juliana Maynard – Lead Scientist

Which team do you work in and what does that team do? I work in Discovery, specifically the pre-clinical imaging team. We are a team of 4 – there’s me, Neil Gingles, Benedetta Arno and Gemma Forrest– it’s a great team! What’s your role within your team? I engage with our collaborators to understand what […]

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Meet Sarah Brockbank – Lead Scientist

Which team do you work in and what does that team do? I work in Virtual R&D team. Our remit is to support clients drug discovery projects by reviewing their project plans and data, challenging it, and providing proposals to take them to the next stage. We also work closely with external experts within our […]

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Meet Duygu Yilmaz – Senior Scientist

Which team do you work in and what does that team do? I work in the Target Engagement & Validation team – our goal is to help companies develop better drug molecules that have meaningful effects in the clinic. We design experiments to demonstrate that a drug molecule engages with its molecular target and affects […]

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