Profile

I am a Postdoctoral researcher in the labs at the University of Leicester. But I work with a large team of scientists based all over the country. My whole team are all focussed on finding a treatment for a cancer that affects the bones – it’s called multiple myeloma. At the moment it is not treatable by radiotherapy or surgery and a new targeted therapy is urgently needed.

In my team there are chemists who make various different moleclues they think will be effective against myeloma. Other scientists test how active the molecules are. My job in this team is to understand how the most active molecules act on their target, a protein within cancer cells. I can then tell the chemists how to change the molecules in a way that will improve its effectivity.

I use a technique call X-ray crystallography. I use an intense X-ray beam focused on a crystalline sample containing the active molecules bound to the protein. The X-rays are scattered in a particular way that encodes the three dimensional interaction between the active molecule and the protein. I use various different bits of software (and a fairly powerful computer) to decode the scattered Xrays and can then visualise the interaction at the atomic level.

I don’t really have a typical day but I have a few different things I could be doing.

One of the main things that I do in the labs is purify my target protein. Using genetic engineering my protein is made in the same way as normal cellular proteins – however I grow these cells in culture flasks. I have to separate my protein away from all the rest of the cellular components. This has to be done slowly and in a large cold room at fridge temperatures. When I have purified protein, I can then set about growing crystals which don’t look too different from salt or sugar crystals – they are about the same size too (approximately 0.1mm).

After getting my protein crystals I add a solution containing the potential drugs. I then take my crystals to the countryside in Oxfordshire to one of the brightest X-ray sources in the world – Diamond Light Source. X-rays are scattered by the crystal and encode the position of all the atoms in the crystal. The information is recorded as spots on a screen. I collect all this data and head back to my office to analyse.

Back in my office I go about getting the atomic information out of the X-ray data spots. I use various bit of software, and though various stages before I get to the point where I can see how the drugs interact with the protein. At this point I analyse the specific contacts, and tell the team of chemists that I work with how to improve the drug. Then the whole process repeats itself…