Bailey & Phillips Research Group

Our research interests are in synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.  Currently in our group we are working on the synthesis of an indole alkaloid called ajmaline, which is used to treat patients with irregular heartbeat and has 9 adjacent chiral centres in its intricate 3D structure.  Some of our intermediates in this work have shown interesting anti-malarial properties and we are investigating this further in a spin-out project.  In another medicinally related project, we have been studying how to help the uptake of pharmaceutically important compounds that aren't orally absorbed; we now have a way of attaching such molecules to a special carrier, allowing them to be 'smuggled' into the bloodstream.

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