Student projects

Employment

Category: Offered

Published Date Written by Administrator

We have no specific positions currently available. However, we are always looking for talented people. If you have skills that will complement what we do or you have a project we may be interested in, please contact us.

Engineering better drug discovery methods- New techniques for identifying ion channel models (2 rela

Category: Offered

Published Date Written by Administrator

Modern drug discovery is essential for the health and well being of our population, yet many of the methods employed have essentially remained unchanged over the decades. The Pharmaceutical industry is seeking novel breakthrough paradigms to drive drug discovery for the coming decades. One class of important drug targets, ion channel proteins, are particularly amenable to application of engineering approaches. Ion channels are molecules in cell membranes that allow electrical current to flow into and out of the cell. Many cell types, including heart, muscle and brain cells rely on this electrical signalling to perform their basic functions. Mutations that change the way ion channels function are responsible for many serious human diseases. On the other hand, many important drugs alter ion channel function and, so, ion channels are exciting targets for new drug development. Understanding how mutations cause disease or specifying how a drug should alter ion channel function is dependent on having high quality mathematical models. The conductivity of ion channels depends on their state and probability of changing between states depends on the electric field and presence of drugs and natural ligands. Mathematically, the different states and transitions between them are described by hidden state Markov models. Currently, building high quality models requires long experiments and complex data analysis. The aim of this project is to develop mathematical techniques for system identification of hidden Markov models. The projects will have an experimental and theoretical component and can exploit recent advances in experimental techniques for studying ion channels. The candidate will design and build real time systems to not only provide a virtual cell environment for the channel to function but to provide a real time method to describe a drugs mechanism of action using the theoretical approaches described above. This project will require skills in programming, a desire to learn biological methods as well as mathematical analysis of channel function with a focus on providing state of the art tools to aid in the drug discovery process.