A chemical biology approach to elucidate molecular targets in epithelial-mesenchymal transition

Overall we aim to exploit a combination of chemical biology approaches to in cell proteomic profiling to investigate the molecular targets and cellular mechanisms of small molecule modulators of the epithelial tomesenchymal transition, an important biological process central to cellcell adhesion and migration and of therapeutic relevance in cancer metastasis, wound healing and regenerative medicine. The initial focus will be on the teleocidin family of indole-containing cyclic peptoid natural products and will involve the design and synthesis of non-covalent, covalent and novel photoaffinity probes as well as more conventional affinitybased pull down probes to identify and subsequently validate their putative molecular targets in living cells. Falls into the Chemical Biology and Biological Chemistry, and the Synthetic Organic Chemistry EPSRC research areas.