Abstract

Personalised medicine relies on the development of
molecularly targeted agents that can be administered to patients stratified
according to tumour genotype and/or expression of specific biomarkers. However,
building an assay cascade to address a particular molecular target can be challenging
where there are no tool compounds to assist in target validation, where there
are practical issues of assay implementation, or where targets are not amenable
to ‘drugging’ by conventional strategies. Structure-based drug discovery
(SBDD), dependent on technologies for protein expression, purification,
biophysical/biochemical characterisation and structural biology, can be
success-determining in providing approaches to identifying and optimising hit
matter against these difficult targets.  We
have assembled a Centre Network Accelerator project in structural biology to
provide a resource within the CRUK Centres network that addresses these early
challenges in drug discovery. We provide dedicated expert scientist support for
protein production at Leicester and Newcastle, for NMR and SPR screening at the
Beatson Institute and for computational chemistry at the ICR. The network also
supports access to the XChem Fragment Screening Facility at the Diamond Light
Source for CNAA-approved projects and CRUK DDUs. We welcome applications and accept
projects into our portfolio following review by our steering board. Our aim is
to help progress more high quality targets into drug discovery.