Research

Drug discovery and development can be divided into three activities: understanding the disease process including the selection of pathway/molecular targets; development of candidate drugs with appropriate pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics properties; testing drugs in clinical trials. The majority of drug projects fail, at great cost, usually for a combination of factors related to these activities. Consequently, drug discovery research in the pharmaceutical industry is governed by the principles of discipline, process and business in order “to be practical and to play to the probabilities” (C. Lipinski, C. & E. News, Nov. 2007). Large pharma is optimally organized for mainstream research, but it offers a difficult environment for high-risk, long-term research which thrives best in academic laboratories.

Research at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (IPW) is guided by the concept "Targets - therapeutics - diagnostics: From concepts to prototypes". The long-term mission of our group in the IPW is to advance RNA as both a drug and a target for new therapeutics.

We are working in three general areas: i) new methods to identify RNAs that drive pathological mechanisms; ii) novel assays to help understand the interactions of RNA with ligands and macromolecules in vivo; iii) new classes of RNA-binding ligands. Our projects often involve collaborations and we make special efforts to place new findings into a physiological context. Our research is usually published as full papers and examples of our work are shown in the "publications" section of our web-page.