Abstract

A Structured Approach to Academic Drug Discovery

Simon Ward, Professor, University of Sussex

The Translational Drug Discovery Group was established in 2011 at the University of Sussex to deliver both drug candidates into clinical development and novel chemical probes to enable validation of new therapeutic targets.  Our philosophy is to combine expertise in clinical and biological disease understanding with our pharma track record in drug discovery and development.  This presentation will exemplify our strategy and research in the areas of DNA damage repair pathways for oncology and ion channel modulators for neuroscience indications.  The approach will highlight both our use of structure-based drug design in both lead optimisation and identification and also our approach to hit finding for novel, challenging protein classes.