ÿþ<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <HTML> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <title>PhD project:</title> <meta name="Generator" content="Cocoa HTML Writer"> <meta name="CocoaVersion" content="824.48"> <style type="text/css"> p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: right; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #0000C0} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #264211} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: right; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #264211} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #000000} p.p5 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial} table.t1 {width: 800.0px} td.td1 {width: 200.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px} td.td2 {width: 771.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px} td.td3 {width: 650.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px} td.td4 {width: 18.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px} td.td5 {width: 792.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px} </style> </head> <body> <table width="600.0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="t1"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top" class="td1"> <p class="p1">PhD project:</p> </td> <td colspan="2" valign="top" class="td2"> <p class="p2"><b>Allosteric Inhibitors of Enzymes</b></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" class="td1"> <p class="p1">supervisors:</p> </td> <td colspan="2" valign="top" class="td2"> <p class="p2">Dr John Mitchell (Chemistry) and Dr Nick Westwood (Chemistry), University of St Andrews.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" class="td1"> <p class="p1">funding details:</p> </td> <td colspan="2" valign="top" class="td2"> <p class="p2">Competition Funded Project - UK/EU Students only. This is a 3.5 year project. The student will require a minimum of an upper second class honours degree and the studentship is open to UK and European Community students. Fees and stipend are covered for UK students. EU students can get fees-only covered if they have not studied in the UK and can get full stipend and fees if they have studied in the UK for 3 or more years. </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" class="td1"> <p class="p1">closing date:</p> </td> <td valign="top" class="td3"> <p class="p2">30 April 2012</p> </td> <td valign="top" class="td4"> <p class="p1"> </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="middle" class="td1"> <p class="p1">Contact:</p> </td> <td valign="middle" class="td3"> <p class="p2"><a href="mailto:jbom@st-andrews.ac.uk">jbom@st-andrews.ac.uk</a> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><font color=#0000C0>01334 467259</font></p> </td> <td valign="middle" class="td3"> <p class="p2"><a href="mailto:njw3@st-andrews.ac.uk">njw3@st-andrews.ac.uk</a> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><font color=#0000C0>01334 463816</font></p> </td> <td valign="middle" class="td4"> <p class="p3"></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="3" valign="middle" class="td5"> <br> <p class="p2"><b>Project Description</b></p><br> <p class="p4"> Many drugs work by binding in allosteric sites of enzymes, rather than in the active site. In this project, we will use structural bioinformatics to search protein crystal structures in the PDB for interactions that will allow us to identify novel allosteric inhibitors. We will identify the best structures and substructures to use as probes and design software to identify biologically relevant interaction sites between the probes and enzymes. We will use the same approach to identify chemical structures that can modulate protein-protein interactions and signalling, as well as novel druggable sites on known protein targets. </p> <p class="p4"> Having identified relevant chemical substructures, we will synthesise and assay series of molecules containing them, in order to experimentally develop structure activity relationships. We expect this to lead to promising new leads for drug design, and to series of molecules outside existing patent spaces. </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p class="p5"></p> </body> </html>