Dr Gurdip Bhalay's group focuses on the design and synthesis of safe and effective drugs for the treatment of cancer.
Dr Gurdip Bhalay is a member of the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery where he uses his experiences in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology to help discover new drugs and advance the science of drug discovery. He has worked at big pharma as well as contract research organisations gaining over 20 years’ experience.
Imogen is a PhD student in the Division of Structural Biology focused on designing small molecule splicing modulators, in collaboration with the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery.
Ms Charlotte Bayley obtained a MChem degree from the University of East Anglia in 2020, during which she carried out a placement year at Iceni Diagnostics working in carbohydrate based diagnostics for infectious diseases. Charlotte is working towards a PhD degree in the area of chemical biology and designing novel probes for investigating the tumour microenvironment.
Dr Joshua Clark studied for his undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Bristol before moving to the University of St Andrews for his PhD where he worked under the supervision of Professor David O’Hagan. His PhD project involved the synthesis and study of selectively fluorinated cyclohexane derivatives. He then worked as a radiochemist for Eurofins Selcia before joining the ICR in June 2022 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow.
Dr Thomas Clough joined the ICR in January 2021 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow. Tom studied chemistry at the University of Southampton, where he obtained an MChem following a research project on lanthanide chelators for medical imaging at the University of British Columbia. Following this, he completed a PhD in Professor Nick Long’s group at Imperial College London, working on the design, synthesis and testing of imaging probes targeted to the pancreas.
Ms Elizabeth Cosgrove obtained an MSci in Chemistry with German from University College London in June 2021. She carried out her final year research project at Humboldt University in Berlin, investigating novel fluorination routes using transition metal-based catalysts. Beth joined the ICR in October 2021 as a PhD student in the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery looking at synthetic oligomers as RNA helicase inhibitors.
Dr Federica Gigante joined the ICR in September 2021 as a Higher Scientific Officer. Federica carried out her PhD in medicinal chemistry at the University of Dundee, in the group of Professor Ian Gilbert, her research focused on antiparasitic compounds. She then worked as a synthetic and medicinal chemist in a few companies (Evotec, Angelini, C4T, Eli Lilly) developing large libraries of compounds for several research projects. She then moved to Dotmatics, where she specialized in scientific software used in medicinal chemistry, before returning to research and joining the ICR, where she brings her experience to develop new anticancer compounds.
Matthew Martin is an organic chemist and postdoctoral researcher in the Cancer Therapeutics division. Matthew completed his undergrad and master’s degree at Keele University and then obtained his PhD at the University of Glasgow. His research experience is founded on a methodological-based approach to organic synthesis and he has developed a keen interest in the discovery of new reactions, characterisation of novel compounds and detailed study of reaction mechanisms.
Dr Sahra St John-Campbell is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Gurdip Bhalay in the Medicinal Chemistry 1 group. Prior to this she was Leverhulme Trust funded Research Fellow at University College London working in the Sheppard group. She completed her PhD at Imperial College London under the supervision of Dr James Bull in 2018. Following this she was awarded a Doctoral Prize Fellowship to continue her research on transient C(sp3)−H functionalisation, and went on to gain industrial experience in Process Chemistry at Pharmaron UK. Sahra received her MChem with Industrial Training at the University of Bath, including a year-long placement in medicinal chemistry at Takeda Cambridge and a final year research project with Prof. Christopher Frost.