Sustaining Innovation Postdocs and Projects

Dr Connor Taylor

Chemistry, Astex Pharmaceuticals and the University of Cambridge

Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) is an efficient methodology for the generation of lead compounds. However, structure-based optimisation of weakly binding fragments into high affinity drug molecules often means that difficult synthetic challenges arise, hence there is a growing demand for cutting-edge synthetic methods and experimental techniques. This project focusses on machine-learning methodologies to more effectively plan and execute synthetic sequences to obtain desired target molecules mandated by FBDD optimisation.

Recent publications:

Pomberger et al., “The effect of chemical representation on active machine learning towards closed-loop optimization”; React. Chem. Eng. 2022 https://doi.org/10.1039/D2RE00008C