Rational Drug Design

Research Interest:

We are applying the technique of structural biology towards rational drug design. At present, this forms part of a cross-disciplinary partnership with Cytopia Pty, Ltd, but will be expanded to cover Infection and Immunity.

We have targeted a group of essential enzymes, termed protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs), for therapeutic development. We have a well-established structural biology program on the Janus Kinases, known to be implicated in a number of haematological cancers and immune-related disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. We have recently solved the structure of JAK2 (Lucet et al, 2006), which has allowed a rational drug design of JAK2 kinase inhibitors to begin. We are also using a structure-based approach to reveal the molecular mechanisms by which JAK kinases are regulated.

Project Team:

• Isabelle Lucet
• Neal Williams
• Onisha Patel
• Mark Walter
• Rebecca Bamert
• Christina Wang
• Cathleena McLaren