The Cambridge Molecular Therapeutics Programme (MRC Programme 2)

Most new drugs fail because they target the wrong part of a protein. Enzymes—proteins that drive chemical reactions—have active sites that look nearly identical across many different enzymes, so drugs that block one active site often block others, causing side effects and poor results. This research team is developing a completely different approach: instead of blocking an enzyme’s active site, they aim to disrupt the physical interactions between proteins, which are far more specific and varied. They will build new methods to identify which protein-protein interactions to target, design drugs that break those interactions, and test those drugs on human cells to see if they work without harming healthy tissue. If successful, this work could transform how drugs are discovered, moving away from blunt tools that hit many targets toward precise molecules that only affect the disease-causing process. This is fundamental science—it does not promise a new drug tomorrow—but it rethinks the basic rules of drug design, with the potential to eventually produce treatments for cancer and other diseases that are more effective and far less toxic.