The Department of Chemistry undertakes research across the full range of modern chemical science, including several areas with direct relevance to immunology, inflammation and infection. Approaches include chemical biology and proteomics, synthetic chemistry and drug discovery, drug delivery and nanomaterials, methods for vaccine design and manufacture, diagnostic development, artificial cells, glycoprotein biology, antibody engineering, high-resolution imaging, and cell therapy. We also host the Institute of Chemical Biology Centre for Doctoral Training in Chemical Biology and the 51³Ô¹ÏÍø MRes in Drug Discovery and Development course, which support a wide range of postgraduate training in immunity and inflammation.

Prominent examples of our work in this space include:

  • Development of anti-inflammatory nanomedicines that deliver potent innate inflammation resolving peptides and proteins, with excellent efficacy in a range of chronic inflammatory disease models, including atherosclerosis, IBD (Crohn’s and Colitis, anastomosis), stroke, ischemia reperfusion injury and kidney fibrosis.
  • Stimuli-responsive nanogels that can release innate anti-oxidising enzymes and anti-ROS enzymes.
  • Designer antibodies using integrated discovery strategies to study and treat neurodegeneration and dementia.
  • Establishment of NK:IO Ltd., an 51³Ô¹ÏÍø spinout company focused on harnessing the power of natural killer cells for the immunotherapy of cancer, jointly founded by Professor Matt Fuchter (Chemistry) and Professor Hugh Brady (Life Sciences).

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Related papers
  • Rueda-Zubiaurre, A.; Yahiya, S.; Fischer, O.; Hu, X.; Saunders, C.; Sharma, S.; Straschil, U.; Shen, J.; Tate, E. W.; Delves, M.; Baum, J.; Barnard, A.; Fuchter, M. J. J. Med. Chem. 2020, 63, 2240.
  •  Bardell-Cox, O. A.; White, A. J. P.; Aragón, L.; Fuchter, M. J. MedChemComm. 2019, 10, 1438.
  •  Rushworth, J.; Montgomery, K.; Cao, B.; Brown, R.; Dibb, N.; Nilsson, S. K.; Chiefari, J.; Fuchter, M. J. ACS Appl. Bio Mater. 2020, 3, 5775.
  •  Fuchter, M. J.; Brady, H. 2018, WO2018/158587
  • Rawson, T. M. et al. "". Nat Rev Microbiol 1–12 (2021) doi:10.1038/s41579-021-00578-9.
  • Rawson, T. M. et al. "". The Lancet Digital Health 1, e335–e343 (2019).
  • Le, T. T. et al. "". Anal Chem 89, 6781–6786 (2017).
  • Stefan Reischl et al. "", Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Volume 27, Issue 9, September 2021, Pages 1379–1393
  • "" Suman Basak et al. Biomacromolecules 2021 22 (2), 386-398
  • "" Francesco A. Aprile et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2020, 117 (24) 13509-13518
  • "" Francesco A. Aprile et al. Science Advances Jun 2017

Members

Dr Francesco Aprile

Professor Alan Armstrong

Dr Anna Barnard

Professor Tony Cass

Professor Oscar Ces

Dr Marco Di Antonio

Professor Matthew Fuchter

Dr Nazila Kamaly

Dr Marina Kuimova

Dr Benjamin Schumann

Professor Ed Tate

Professor Ramon Vilar