Projects and Collaborations in the Palmer Lab

The Palmer lab, at the University of Strathclyde, is home to several different PhD students and postdocs who all work under the overarching umbrella of ‘computational chemistry’. However, this is a broad umbrella indeed – within it, members are tackling problems ranging from the design of next-generation pharmaceuticals, right the way through to early cancer diagnosis! These projects leverage a wide-variety of physics-based and data driven methods, including artificial intelligence, molecular dynamics simulations, and molecular docking. The Lab were founding members of the Strathclyde Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Hub, SCoTCH.

Some of the projects in the Palmer lab include:

  • The utilisation of data-driven approaches to support the design, synthesis, and evaluation of next-generation molecules beyond Lipinski’s Rule of Five. This will offer new treatment options for diseases with currently limited/no effective therapies, including genetic disorders, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
  • The design of next-generation transcriptional regulators by applying artificial intelligence to experimental analytical data. This is to provide digital tools for accelerating oligo-based drug design.
  • The computational design of artificial metalloenzymes (enzymes which contain at least one metal ion in their active site), with the intent of streamlining the process of developing future metalloenzymes experimentally.
  • The computational design of small molecules to prevent the early formation of multispecies biofilms. This will help address the growing healthcare and industrial burden associated with antimicrobial resistance and persistent biofilm contamination.
  • The development of artificial intelligence models for the early detection of cancers from spectroscopic liquid biopsies, with the aim of helping to lower the global healthcare burden.
  • The predictive design of therapeutic oligonucleotides to expedite the pharmaceutical pipeline.

For more details about the Palmer Lab in general, please contact Prof. David Palmer (david.palmer@strath.ac.uk), Pure and Applied Chemistry, University of Strathclyde.

For more information on any of the above projects in specific, from top to bottom, please contact the following researchers from the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde:

For a list of the research areas in which ARCHIE-WeSt users are active please click here.