Non-Canonical Amino Acids for Protein Analysis and Peptide Inhibitors

Drugs are specialised, high value-add materials. However, new drugs are expensive to develop in the pharmaceutical industries and over the last decade the Therapeutic Goods Administration approved only approximately 40 new drugs per year for use in Australia. This project aims to accelerate the early stage of drug discovery. It will use innovative biochemistry, modern magnetic spectroscopy and high performance computing to develop new methods which quickly inform medicinal chemists how drug candidates interact with their targets and how they can be pharmacologically improved. Early stage drug discovery is primarily conducted in small biotech companies. This project will support Australias fast growing biotechnology sector by accelerating the rate with which these companies can secure intellectual property.