Potter group | Medicinal, Biological Chemistry & Drug Discovery
- (0)1865 271 945
- barry.potter@pharm.ox.ac.uk
Over 550 papers published
Over 45 granted patent families
Academic and industrial awards
We design, synthesise and evaluate biologically active molecules and work at the interfaces of Chemistry with Biology and Medicine. Our synthetic tools probe cell signalling and in Medicinal Chemistry our drugs have reached numerous clinical trials, with clinical benefit for cancer patients.
In our Group, we use synthetic chemistry to drive mechanistic research in fundamental biology and for therapeutic intervention in medicine. We are uncovering biological mechanisms and new drug targets, designing synthetic drug candidates and translating them into clinical use via Academic Drug Discovery.
In 2016, we moved to Oxford from the University of Bath, choosing to locate our new chemistry laboratory here in the Department of Pharmacology to be as close as possible to cutting-edge biological and medical research. Our work is highly collaborative, international and is focused around two themes:
The Chemistry of Cell Signalling: Inositol phosphate-mediated signal transduction and the roles of the higher inositol polyphosphates and nucleotide second messengers cyclic ADP-ribose, ADP-ribose and NAADP.
Anticancer Drug Design, Discovery & Translational Medicine: Drug design for hormone-dependent and independent diseases in women’s health; inhibitor design for sulfatases; aromatase, dehydrogenases and multi-targeting approaches.
Synthetic chemistry allows access to structurally-modified messengers and is supported by biochemical assays, protein crystallography and by in silico computational design. Synthetic molecules are often co-crystallized with relevant proteins for structure-based design.
We use chemical insight both to understand and change the way cells signal both within themselves and between each other, specifically tailoring our molecules in defined ways. Our work provides both “first-in-class” biological and clinical targets and the investigative chemical tools and drugs to interact with them.
Our team
-
Barry Potter
Emeritus Professor of Medicinal and Biological Chemistry
External Collaborators
Professor Kate Barald, Michigan, USA
Dr Charles Brearley, UEA, UK
Dr Maria Brehm, Hamburg, Germany
Professor Christophe Erneux, Brussels, Belgium
Professor Alexander Fluegel, Goettingen, Germany
Dr Paul Foster, Birmingham, UK
Professor Antony Galione, Oxford, UK
Professor Andreas Guse, Hamburg, Germany
Professor Adrian Harris, Oxford, UK
Dr Ernie Hamel, NIH, USA
Professor Carlos Kremer, Montevideo, Uruguay
Professor Hon-Cheung Lee, Shenzhen, China
Professor Robert McKenna, Florida, USA
Professor John Schwabe, Leicester, UK
Dr Stephen Shears, NIH, USA
Professor Satoshi Shuto, Sapporo, Japan
Dr Michel Steinmetz, Switzerland
Dr Pawel Swietach, Oxford, UK
Professor Colin Taylor Cambridge, UK
Dr Sabine Windhorst, Hamburg, Germany
Research in our Group is funded by The Wellcome Trust
Gallery of journal covers
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |