Relevant Key Words:

Organic synthesis, heterocyclic chemistry, microwave synthesis, thiopeptide antibiotics, chemistry of ageing, synthetic chemistry, inflammatory disease, Werner syndrome, p38 MAPK inhibitors.

Research Expertise relevant to tissue engineering & repair:

I am a synthetic chemist interested in making compounds for application in biology and medicine. Werner’s Syndrome (WS) is a rare human genetic disease that shows accelerated ageing and an increased cancer incidence, and is studied for the insights that it might give into both processes. A key feature of WS is that cells from these individuals show a much reduced cellular lifespan in the laboratory as a consequence of replicative senescence. We are seeking to understand this phenomenon by preparing a range of inhibitors of signal transduction pathways to delineate the signalling mechanisms that trigger accelerated ageing and produce the Werner phenotype This offers great potential for the development of clinical treatments for this disorder, in so doing understanding some of the fundamental mechanisms operating in telomere-independent cell senescence, cancer and human ageing and may lead to the first chemotherapeutic treatment for WS

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If you have reagents that may be of interest to the CITER Membership, e.g. cell lines, microbiological cultures. Please give a representative list below:

Inhibitors of cell signalling pathways, in particular p38 MAPK