Our Capabilities & Facilities
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Our Facilities
We have laboratory and office space within the Laboratory Block at Charing Cross Hospital. Click on the links for more details about:
We are a multi-disciplinary group of scientists whose pharmaceutical industry experience is key to translating basic biomedical research into candidate medicines.
Our core skills include:
- Medicinal and Synthetic Chemistry
- Computational Drug Design
- Pharmacology
- Assay Development for discovery of biologically active compounds
- Automated Screening for active compounds
- Project management
Medicinal & Synthetic Chemistry
Tool compounds can be useful when investigating novel biological pathways. As well as having an ever-expanding compound library within the centre, the DDC can help identify such molecules from the literature and help obtain these from commercial suppliers or arrange bespoke synthesis
DDC medicinal chemistry expertise can create strategies that optimise the pharmacological activities and selectivities of compounds to generate specific lead and tool molecules.
Computational Drug Design
The DDC has a suite of virtual screening tools which can be used to efficiently identify hit and tool compounds from the many millions of structures available in commercial chemical libraries.
We have worked with Cresset BioMolecular Discovery in particular to develop a technology that enables identification of potential ligands without in-depth structural information on the biological target. Data pipelining software allows us to prioritise compounds for purchase and biological testing.
Assay Development
The analysis of novel molecular interactions and identification of tool modulators requires a specific and robust biological assay. The DDC can support the development of such assays from the benchtop to fully automated versions that can process hundreds of compounds. The DDC laboratory is fully equipped to support vitro enzyme-based assays, protein-protein interaction assays and cellular assays up to Category 2 in 96 or 384 well format. Click on the appropriate links for details of the laboratory and equipment.
