This project will capitalise on these achievements and explore biocompatible synthetic routes to various kinds of bicycles and their applications in drug discovery.

This project will screen numerous boronic acid derivatives available at the Research School of Chemistry (optional: computational screening of data banks). Screening hits will be modified to generate drug-like inhibitors with anti-dengue activity.

This project will explore phage display (Nobel prize 2018) as the most robust approach and establish this technique at the Research School of Chemistry.

This project will design, synthesise and evaluate a series of small molecules as new lead compounds against SARS-CoV-2. You will explore “warheads” such as alpha-ketoamides and Michael acceptors to inactivate the SARS-CoV-2 main protease by covalent modification of its active site.

BODIPY dyes are widely used as fluorescent tags for key sites in biomolecules. An alternative approach is to develop amine-functionalised BODIPYs which could be appended to peptides or proteins via a cysteine residue.