Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
Biomedicine Discovery Seminar
Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute
Discovery and applications of cyclic peptides in drug design
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
12.00 – 1.00 pm
Level 3 Seminar Room
15 Innovation Walk
Clayton campus
Abstract
Naturally occurring cyclic peptides offer great potential as leads
for drug design. This talk will focus on a class of cyclic peptides
known as cyclotides, which are topologically unique in that they
have a head-to-tail cyclised peptide backbone and a cystine
knotted arrangement of disulfide bonds. This makes them
exceptionally stable to chemical, thermal or enzymatic treatments
and, indeed, they are amongst nature’s most stable proteins.
Because of their exceptional stability and well-defined structures
cyclotides make excellent templates for drug design applications.
This presentation will describe the discovery of cyclotides in
plants, their structural characterization, and applications in drug
design for the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic
disease, infectious disease, autoimmune disease and pain.
Presenter
Professor David Craik
PhD, FAA, FRACI, FRSC
The University of Queensland
About the presenter
David Craik is a Professor of Chemistry at the Institute for
Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland.
He
obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from La Trobe University
and undertook postdoctoral studies at Florida State and Syracuse
Universities before taking up a lectureship at the Victorian College
of Pharmacy in 1983. He was appointed Professor of Medicinal
Chemistry and Head of School in 1988. He moved to University of
Queensland in 1995 to set up a new biomolecular NMR laboratory
and is currently an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow. His research
focuses on applications of circular proteins and toxins in drug
design. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and
has received numerous awards for his research, including the
Ralph F. Hirschmann Award from the American Chemical Society.
He is author of 600 scientific papers (h-index 75, citations 20,000)
and has trained 60 PhD students.
www.monash.edu/discovery-institute
CRICOS Provider: Monash University 00008C.