Chris teaches mainly in the area of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. This includes aspects of synthetic chemistry, how chemistry interacts with biology, pharmacokinetics (what your body does to a drug) and pharmacodynamics (how a drug works in your body). He uses many examples from his research career to show how concepts in these subjects work in the real world and believes that context (why and how something relates to real world applications) is at least as important as theory. So if you want to gain some experience as to how your basic learning in chemistry, biology and biochemistry can be harnessed towards discovering a new pharmaceutical drug or just want to know some more about how drugs might work, you should register for one of Chris’ classes!

Our research platform deals with the discovery and pre-clinical development of new pharmaceutical agents in the anticancer, antimalarial and antibacterial chemotherapy domains.  Our programs examine the role of reactive oxygen levels in our targets and how we can selectively elevate the levels of these species to effectively eliminate the target pathogen or condition. Once we demonstrate proof of concept in the Orange laboratories, we partner with outside agencies (both national and international) to further the development of our candidate drugs.

Malaria:

Development of thiosemicarbazide antimalarials

Novel peroxidic antimalarials related to the artemisinins

Tuberculosis:

Development of phenoxazine antitubercular agents

Cancer:

Discovery of low dose synergistic drug combinations with a reactive oxygen endpoint

Discovery of highly active and low toxicity pyrimidine drugs in cancer

Modification of natural oxidant drugs (artemisinins) for effectiveness against cancer