Alexander Gee

Alexander is a motivated and passionate medicinal chemistry honours graduate with a strong academic background as well as outstanding results. He completed an honours candidature undertaking research concerning the surface modification and functionalisation of lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles for their use in theranostics. Currently, he is engaged in doctorate research for the drug design and development of multi-target therapeutics and their application in the treatment of dementia (specifically Alzheimer’s). He is looking to become a full-time R&D-based medicinal chemist, with a broad scope of interests in research including organic chemistry as well as inorganic and nanotechnology interdisciplinary crossovers.

Forefront Group: Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Discovery

Supervisor:

Professor Michael Kassiou

Expertise:

  • Organic Chemistry
  • Medicinal Chemistry
  • Drug Discovery

Affiliate Organisations:

The University of Sydney, The Royal Australian Chemical Institute, The Australian Nanotechnology Network

Neurodegeneration of interest:

Dementia, Alzheimer's Disease and other Tauopathies

Specific Skills:

  • Organic Synthesis
  • Drug Design

Project - Multi-Target Drug Design for Tau Protein Aggregation

Project tag with a disease

Dementia, AD, Tauopathies

Research Project Description

Recently, it has been determined that current amyloid- and cholinergic-centric treatments of Alzheimer’s disease have had little success to date in respect to disease-modifying therapies, with taucentric therapeutics now being a strongly proposed area for treatment of Alzheimer’s. This project seeks to address this new desire for taucentric research by developing new therapeutic candidates for the treatment of dementia (most specifically Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies that may benefit) by encompassing the current pharmacophores of compounds that target various individual targets in the treatment of tau protein aggregations, into newly designed molecules with hybrid pharmacophores that aim to treat through synergistic multi-target mechanisms. Molecular structures of the compounds will be determined via the use of various characterisation methods such as 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, MS and IR Spectrometry.

Once confirmed, the compounds will undergo various screening methods to understand structural-activity relationships and subsequent efficacy through a synergistic multi-target process, as opposed to conventional single target processes, so as to provide greater efficacy in the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other tauopathies.

  • The design and synthesis of small molecules exhibiting hybrid pharmacophores for their use in the prevention of tau protein aggregation
  • The determination and confirmation of newly designed compound structures via various characterisation methods (e.g. 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, MS and IR Spectrometry)
  • The screening of the newly designed compounds to determine the structure-activity relationships (SAR) and efficacy of these compounds in the treatment of tau protein aggregation through multiple targets.