Drug discovery: From molecules to medicines | with the University of Sussex

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Barny Greenland to discuss the MSc in Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis from the University of Sussex - a course that takes you from molecules to medicines

Participants

In order of first appearance:

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ
• Dr Barny Greenland - reader in smart organic materials in the chemistry department at the University of Sussex, and the director for research and knowledge exchange for the School of Life Sciences

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ. I'm your host, Emily Slade and in this episode we take a look at a course from the University of Sussex that takes us from molecules to medicines. Dr Barny Greenland joins me to discuss the MSc in Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis.

Dr Barny Greenland: Hi, my name is Dr Barny Greenland and I'm a synthetic chemist at the University of Sussex. I'm the course convener on the MSc in Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis.

Emily Slade: Amazing. So to begin with, what is medicinal chemistry and drug discovery?

Dr Barny Greenland: So over the past 100 years or so, life expectancy across the world has increased hugely. And a lot of this is down to advances in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery in particular. So, medicinal chemistry is simply putting together new molecules that might be used as drugs. But the drug discovery process is much more complicated than that. And it goes all the way from starting off by thinking of a disease that you might want to study, and then discovering a new molecule that might affect that disease. And then generally, this new molecule isn't actually suitable as a drug, it might poison the person who takes it or it might have some other interaction in their body. And therefore you have to come in and slightly change the structure of that drug. And once you've got that sorted out, so it's not toxic anymore, then you need to formulate it into some way that it can be taken perhaps a pill or perhaps by injection, then it has to pass through a whole load of tests in order to be shown to be safe, before finally making it to market. And that whole process from establishing what disease you might want to cure, to getting a drug onto market is the drug discovery process. And that can take a really huge amount of time, 15, 20 years perhaps. And so over the course of this MSc you'll be learning the major signposting points on that route from discovering a new molecule to getting a drug on the market.

Emily Slade: Amazing. That's fascinating. I had no idea the process could be so long.

Dr Barny Greenland: Yeah, at least that, and £2billion a drug.

Emily Slade: Wow, that's, that's crazy. So the MSc in Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis, can you tell us what it is and what it involves?

Dr Barny Greenland: So our MSc in Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis covers all the aspects that you're going to need to learn to become a successful medicinal chemist. So you'll be able to learn and work with the academics whose research is making a real difference in this area at the moment. The first semester of our course, includes four top courses, where you will understand the fundamentals about the drug design process, but it also contains a module, which is specifically designed for transferable skills, because a lot of the skills that you need to be a medicinal chemist, for example, being able to present your work being able to talk to an audience, or members of the public or being able to talk to scientists, in a very technical level. And not just down to your knowledge, but down to practicing these skills, you'll also have a chance to get some CV writing and some networking skills as well. And within the second semester, you'll really get a chance to work in our laboratories. Because drug discovery is an interesting mix of theoretical work, but also practical skills, you have to actually go into a lab and make these molecules. And so in the second semester, you'll spend most of your time working in our labs, alongside our researchers on your own projects, where you'll be able to drive the direction of the work to see what it's like to really work within a drug discovery team. And hopefully, you'll be able to start off with a molecule that doesn't seem to work terribly well as a drug and make some changes to it. So that we end up with something that might work a bit better towards the end, whether you're interested in producing new drugs by synthesising new molecules, or just have a more general interest in the process of drug development. I really think that our new course at Sussex is perfect for you.

Emily Slade: Out of curiosity, when you're going into the lab as a student, and you're learning these skill sets, and you're practicing how to essentially do drug discovery for want of a better term, what do you use? Like, what are you physically using? What molecules are you finding? Obviously, I can't imagine new students are handed brand new sort of diseases, that sort of thing. Where are you finding these these samples?

Dr Barny Greenland: So... the drug discovery process works with finding a molecule which interacts with a disease on a petri dish, so not within a human. So it might kill a type of bacteria on a petri dish. But that molecule itself may not be suitable for putting into people because it may be toxic. But the understanding is that molecules that are similar to the one that you found, are also likely to kill the bacteria, but hopefully won't be so toxic. So the job of practicing synthetic chemistry drug discovery is to produce a range of molecules, which looked like that initial one, and test them to see if they actually have a better profile for being a drug. And so when you come in and work in our synthetic laboratories, you'll be making more complex molecules from simple molecules. So we'll be making molecules which have never existed in the universe before, and then you'll be hopefully testing them against the disease that you're studying. There's trillions and trillions of molecules out there and it's actually quite easy to make new ones. The difficulty isn't making new ones which do something useful.

Emily Slade: So cool. Sussex is renowned for their research in this field. So how does this feed into the course?

Dr Barny Greenland: So within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex, of which the chemistry department is part of that, we also have a section called the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre. And this is relatively unique amongst all universities in that it's a centre that's made up of chemists and other people that are required in the drug discovery process. And while they interact with the chemistry department as a whole, most of the time, they're specifically targeting early stage drug candidates. So that's the molecules early on in the drug discovery pipeline, and moving them towards drugs, which might be suitable for the market in the near future. And so they're slightly distinct from the rest of the chemistry department, in that their job is to try and work specifically on producing new early stage drug candidates. But throughout the whole course, you'll be taught from chemistry experts from the chemistry department and across the department as needed. And they are able to take in their research that they're doing with their research groups from day-to-day and bring that into the lectures. So you'll be learning stuff, which isn't in the textbooks. And depending on the research project, you take, you'll have the opportunity to work closely alongside their research group. So that's their PhD students and postdocs and researchers, both with people from the department itself, or should you choose that kind of project and people actually within the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre. So for example, in the first semester, you'll have an understanding of the type of research that's going on within the department. And you'll be able to choose to fit in with a work programme that's going on at the moment. So, for example, within the Department of Chemistry, we have some projects that are producing a library of small compounds which inhibit the type of interactions that occur in, for example, leukemia patients. We also have a project synthesising a class of molecule called benzoxaboroles. And these are antibacterial, but they also show antifungal, and anti-inflammatory and inflammatory properties. And finally, just by example, we have some projects going on around the synthesis of molecules that target Galectin-9 and this Galectin-9 or Gal-9 is a biomarker for endometriosis. So it can produce one of these and it'd be easier to diagnose people with this disease.

Emily Slade: Oh, wow, that's amazing. So part of the course involves a drug discovery research project. What is that? And what can students do?

Dr Barny Greenland: So, in the first few months of the course, as I said, you'll be learning about the professional practices and some of the fundamentals underneath it. But during that first semester, you'll also have the chance to formulate a research plan, with the help of experts with the department. So that will give you an idea of how you would start a research project, what the questions are that you need to ask how you might plan to use your time over the six or eight months that you'll be carrying out the project, and how to plan when to write it up. And when to do different parts of the work along as you start moving from from the start of your project towards the end of it. And throughout this work, you'll have gained hands-on experience and all the practical skills that you need to do it. So how to set up reactions, how to stop reactions, how to isolate your products. And you'll also use the whole suite of analytical equipment that we have within our department. For example, you'll be able to use nuclear magnetic resonance machines, NMR machines, these are the ones which tell you how the protons and the carbons in your molecule are joined together, you'll also get the chance if you manage to make suitable crystals to use X-ray crystallography, which essentially takes a three dimensional photograph of your molecule so you can tell exactly what molecule you've made. So you'll also be able to use our mass spectrometers. These are the instruments, which tell you how much your molecule weighs. And therefore you can link it back to the formula of your molecule. And towards the end of your project. You'll take everything that you've learned and you'll write it up into a dissertation, including all the analysis that you've got to show that you made these new molecules which no one else has made before. And then you'll get a chance to present it in a formal environment at the end so you can practice your presentation skills. And really that's the key thing about being a practicing synthetic chemist was in drug discovery is producing new molecules and being able to present them to your peers at the end of a project.

Emily Slade: You mentioned writing CVs etc. earlier. So how does this course prepare students for their future career?

Dr Barny Greenland: As part of this course, we have a specific designated module on transferable skills. So you'll be doing some continual professional development. And this is one of the major features about working in a professional environment that may not come out of some of your undergraduate courses. So you'll be specifically required to build up a development portfolio. You'll show over the weeks, as the course progresses, how you have learned new skills, so for example, how to plan reactions, how to write up proper presentations, how to have a reflective understanding of your learning, and as the weeks go by, you'll build this up into a single portfolio which is then assessed and you'll be then able to say that you can maintain a record hold of your development throughout that part of the course. And this will be key for when you move out into the work environment. And this sort of thing happens as a matter of course, also during this MSc, we have a specific module where we get a series of guest lectures in from the drug discovery industry. So you'll be learning from people from outside the university who are working really at the cutting edge. And they often come in and give presentations about drug discovery projects, which you need to work very well, or perhaps might have failed later on, which don't appear in the textbooks or the wider literature anyway. So this is the only place that you'll hear about these projects being discussed. In addition, we recognise that it's not just the fundamental chemistry that's important as all these other parts of drug discovery, which are important. And so for example, we aim to get people who set up small pharmaceutical companies to tell you about the problems with setting up start-ups, and with raising money and how you can go about doing that. And we also have lectures from, for example, patent lawyers, one of the key aspects of making money from your drugs is to be able to patent them, so that for a certain period of time, other companies can't copy them. And so all the money that you spent on developing your drug, you can get back and make a profit. Because if you think about it, all these companies are set up in order to make a profit, and in order to make the next generation of drugs. And the only way you can do that is by ensuring that you have an income stream from before and therefore understanding patterns is one of the key things about being proficient in drug discovery, development and synthesis.

Emily Slade: So what's it like to study an MSc in the department of chemistry at Sussex?

Dr Barny Greenland: So the department of chemistry at Sussex has got a thriving community boasts of undergraduates and postgraduates. We have several societies which are set up just for chemistry students. And we also have societies that cover the wider School of Life Sciences, because we sit within a larger school. And then of course, there are the societies which cover the whole of the university, for example, the sports societies. But specifically, within the department of chemistry, we've got this open door policy mean, when stuff are in that offices, we leave our doors ajar. And we're very happy to talk to anyone who comes along and knocks on our door, provided that we have the time there, and then we'll clear up any problems that they have. And we find that this is really important for our students, because there are some aspects of the course which everyone will find hard. It's deliberately designed to be a challenging course. But what we hope is that we're here to help you and we're hope that we're here to inspire you to come and talk to us and learn more about the subjects that we're teaching you about, we find that this proactive response so you can come and knock on our door and have a chat with us really helps people get the most out of studying at the University of Sussex. So our department has also been home to two Nobel Prize winners in chemistry - professor John Cornforth, he did work on enzyme catalysed reactions, and professor Harry Kroto, who discovered a new form of carbon, which he named buckminsterfullerene, and this happened about - he won the Nobel Prize about 30 years ago. And the discovery of buckminsterfullerene really kicked off a whole area of chemistry called nanotechnology.

Emily Slade: Awesome. Can you just describe nanotechnology super quick?

Dr Barny Greenland: So nanotechnology is putting together structures at the atomistic scale to produce new materials and devices. So, for example, over the coming 20 years, this might enable us to produce, for example, computers, where the information is stored within molecules that move from one state to another rather than from silicon. And this will be allowed us to contract our computers hugely, and so much more power as a much smaller volume. And there's a large group of research at the moment that's going on to study justice.

Emily Slade: That's so cool. Thank you. So what advice would you give someone who wants to work in drug discovery and/or medicinal chemistry?

Dr Barny Greenland: The first thing to do is to show enthusiasm in your application, we really want to see people who can write down on paper and show us that they're really excited about learning about drug discovery and medicinal chemistry. We also look for people all opportunities are looking to build their networks. Being able to talk to people across the whole field of drug discovery enables you to find out what's out there enable you to know exactly what you'd like to do in the future. And finally, drug discovery is a really fast-paced field. And we set up this MSc to tackle the problems that are now and in the future. So what we're really looking for is people who want to study an MSc in Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis at Sussex.

Emily Slade: Thank you so much for your time today.

Dr Barny Greenland: Oh, thank you, Emily. It's been great to talk to you.

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Dr Barny Greenland for their time. Make sure you give us a follow wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're enjoying Future You, you can head to iTunes and leave us a review. If you want to get in touch you can email at podcast@prospects.ac.uk or find us on Instagram and TikTok, all the links are in the description. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

Find out more

• Introducing MSc Drug Discovery, Design and Synthesis at the University of Sussex.
• Learn more about what you can do with a pharmacology degree.