Micro Marvels & Mighty Medicine

Brain tumours remain some of the most challenging cancers to treat. It is not always possible to surgically remove the full tumour, and standard therapies risk damaging healthy brain tissue. Therefore, new treatments need to be investigated. Advances in drug design and accelerator technology have brought boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) back into focus. A boron-carrying drug accumulates in tumour cells, and a neutron beam triggers a tiny reaction that destroys cancer cells from within while sparing healthy tissue. BNCT is a precisely targeted treatment with strong potential for future cancer care.

Proteins control virtually all processes inside cells. They do so by temporarily interacting with other cellular components communicating information to switch on and off cellular functions such as growth, repair and death. Interaction events between proteins are referred to as protein-protein interactions and they are important targets for drug discovery. However, these interactions take place not only between fixed shapes but can instead, also occur across a range of dynamic states that involve disordered regions. That makes them challenging for drug discovery in that they are moving targets. As an academic pursuing fundamental research I have the freedom to pursue this challenge and develop the enabling methods to drug these disordered regions. This Pint-of-Science talk will highlight my motivations for pursuing this type of research, what its like being an academic group leader in the current university landscape looks like, discuss broader challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry, and, highlight the opportunities for drug discovery that fundamental academic research like that being pursued in my laboratory can enable.

Predatory Bacteria