Novel chemistry for the synthesis of antibody-protein conjugates

Antibody drug conjugates are one of the most recent and exciting areas of research into new anti-cancer drugs. This is where an extremely cytotoxic drug is chemically attached to an antibody, which can then selectively deliver the drug to cancerous cells. While the chemistry of linkers used to attach small molecule cytotoxic drugs to antibodies has been subject to extensive investigation, chemical methods of attaching much larger proteins to antibodies has received far less attention.

This project will involve the development of novel linker chemistries discovered in our group. The linkers generated will then be used to produce antibody conjugates as potential cancer drugs, by attaching a cytotoxic protein.

This is a multi-disciplinary project and will involve research training in the areas of organic synthesis, chemical biology, biochemistry and protein chemistry.