Development of Novel Chemical Probes for Biological Applications

There is significant interest in tagging protein and peptide targets with a particular label in order to fully understand their role in disease. The application of such chemical tags is hampered by the paucity of methods that are available to conjugate these entities to target proteins in a controlled way. This collaborative effort, which is at the interface of chemistry and biology, centres around addressing the gap outlined above through the development of new conjugation chemistry using a hitherto underexploited reaction manifold, allowing for labelling of only acidic residues in a target protein using a photochemically generated reactive species. This project paves the way towards being able to develop new reagents for understanding protein function that can be combined with a biomolecule of interest in a predictable and selective manner. The general theme of the work is strongly aligned with a key growth area in the current EPSRC portfolio, specifically Chemical Biology. In addition, this proposal complements on-going research collaborations between GSK and the University of Strathclyde involving a wider programme of Industrial PhD students based in the GSK laboratories and funded by GSK.