McLeod Group

The McLeod group employs a wide range of techniques to study drug metabolism.

label Research theme

Analytical Chemistry and Sensors

Catalysis

Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Development

Organic chemistry

domain Division

Synthesis

About

The McLeod group employs a wide range of techniques to study drug metabolism. These include chemical and enzymatic synthesis of drugs and their metabolites, methods of in vitro metabolism coupled with analysis by GC-MS-MS or LC-MS-MS, and molecular biology to engineer improved enzymes with anti-doping applications.

The group is also active in the area of medicinal chemistry of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). Here our goal is the development of new drugs to treat neurological disorders and the application of tools like covalent trapping, an extension of the substituted cysteine accessibility method, to better understand where drugs bind on nAChRs.

Publications

Projects

A Trojan horse to combat malaria

Our goal is to develop an anti-malarial Trojan horse that will deliver a chemical payload to the malaria parasite that it cannot avoid, thus limiting the potential for resistance.

Theme

Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Development, Organic chemistry

Student intake

Open for Honours, Master, PhD, Summer scholar students

Status

Potential

Anti-doping chemistry and designer steroids

This project will combine analytical and synthetic chemistry to study the metabolic fate and biological activity arising from designer steroids use, with the goal of developing assays to detect the abuse of these agents in sport.

Theme

Analytical Chemistry and Sensors, Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Development, Organic chemistry

Student intake

Open for Honours, Master, PhD, Summer scholar students

Status

Potential

Enzyme engineering for improved catalysis

This project will employ the tools of directed evolution to develop new enzymes for the analytical sample preparation and the synthesis of steroid glucuronide conjugates.

Theme

Catalysis

Student intake

Open for Honours, Master, PhD, Summer scholar students

Status

Potential

Exploring the ‘sulfatome’ with new metabolomic methods

This project will develop powerful methods of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, coding and computational data analysis to study sulfate metabolites in mammalian systems with the goal of generating freely available tools that reveal the true complexity and roles of sulfate metabolites