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Research

Researchers within the Astbury Centre have a number of distinctive capabilities, and by working closely with its industry advisory board, the hub has been able to match these to market need, to maximise opportunities for commercialising such expertise.

As a result, there are five areas of particular focus: inhibiting protein-protein interactions, targeted molecular delivery, predicting and preventing biopharmaceutical aggregation, ion channels research and translational drug discovery.

Research priorities

Targeted molecular delivery

Multiple systems have been developed capable of delivering reagents with control of pharmacokinetics and biodistribution. This allows the delivery of reagents including RNAi to large proteins for applications in therapeutics, imaging and/or diagnostics.

Predicting and preventing protein aggregation

Experimental and computational approaches are combined to understand, predict and control the properties of biological molecules.

Protein-protein interactions

A range of approaches has been developed to modulate protein-protein interactions, both with designed small molecules and biomolecular probes.

Ion channels research

Research focussing on understanding normal human functioning and the mechanisms of disease is applied to numerous ion channel types with impact on multiple diseases.

Translational drug discovery

Novel, primarily small molecule, agents have been developed at Leeds to modulate disease pathways in multiple therapeutic areas.