Current Facilities

Medicinal Chemistry Lab

Our medicinal chemistry laboratory provides the facilities for the discovery and synthesis of novel bioactive CNS molecules. By using rational design principles we are able to develop new bioactive molecules that are also amendable to the incorporation of positron emitters or single photon emitters for application as radiotracers in functional imaging. Rational design of these ligands allows us to further explore structure-activity relationships and leads to future therapeutic strategies.

Having been completed in late 2006, the lab houses the latest technology available in modern organic and medicinal chemistry and provides access to analytical techniques such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Mass Spectrometry.

We are also equipped to perform a range of in vitro assays as well as immunohistochemistry as part of our drug discovery research.

Radiochemistry Lab

The radiochemistry lab houses shielded hot cells for the safe handling of positron emitters and radio-isotopes of iodine as well as a TracerLab nucleophilic fluorination module for the automated production of fluorine-18 PET tracers and both semi-preparative and analytical HPLC for the isolation of radiotracers and quality control.

Our facilities will soon be expanding to include;

• PET cyclotron
• Combinatorial chemistry platform
• High throughput screening
• Automated peptide synthesiser
• Microwave synthesis reactor