The current opportunity is available for current Manchester Met students, to apply you must be based in the UK for the duration of the role.
Are you interested in getting some chemistry research project experience? Interested in drug development?
This is a laboratory position for a project focused on novel therapeutics. The project is suitable for students who are interested in pursuing a postgraduate degree or to work in the pharmaceutical industry.
Project Outline:
The global community requires new therapeutics to address the growing public health issues caused by an aging population and drug resistance. Cancer and cardiovascular disease are the leading causes of deaths worldwide with nearly 27 million deaths reported in 2015, whilst the cost of getting a drug to the market is now £900m. The treatment of these diseases has significant financial implications for our health care systems (billions of pounds/year), making it critical that therapeutics are effective.
Targeted protein degradation represents a promising approach in drug discovery for targeting disease-causing proteins, including those that were previously considered "undruggable" by traditional small molecule inhibitors. These small molecules can be tailored to enable disease-specific protein degradation rather than conventional inhibition where the functional activity of the protein of interest is switched off. Targeted protein degraders are a class of small molecules that selectively break down specific proteins within cells through the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS), a highly regulated biological pathway in eukaryotes responsible for the correct disposal of proteins. Protein degradation is controlled through specific enzymes (E3 ligases) that when activated by small molecules attach biological tags to a protein of interest and mark it for degradation (via the UPS). As a result, there is a key focus on the development of novel targeted protein degraders for therapeutic applications, such as cancer.
You will join an ongoing project focused on the synthesis of next-generation targeted protein degraders, which have been designed to decrease off-target degradation and improve drug-like properties. You will be join weekly group meetings to gain experience in oral presentations and improve problem solving skills. Any results from the project will be used towards a publication and you will be listed as an author.
Details
Dates: 3 June - 27 June 2024
Hours per week: 20
This is a laboratory based role. You will receive training on the fundamental skills required to complete a medicinal chemistry research project.
You will be expected to develop the following skills and experiences while carrying out this internship
- Experience working within a research group
- Improve laboratory skills and confidence
- Set up and run air/moisture-sensitive reactions
- Develop skills in medicinal chemistry
- How to keep a detailed laboratory notebook
- Reaction monitoring by thin-layer chromatography (TLC)
- Work-up and purification techniques
- Characterisation of isolated materials through standard analytical techniques (such as IR, LC-MS and NMR)
- Gain experience in writing up experimental data
- Preparation of written reports and presentations
Please Note - As part of the 2024 Student Internship offering, priority will be given to Level 5 & 6 students who have specified in the Careers Registration survey (this is completed during enrolment and cannot be changed at this time) that they have had no work experience in the last 12 months and would like some on campus work or a short work placement. However, applications are welcomed from all students meeting the criteria below.
Students are only eligible to undertake one internship under the 2024 Student Internship offering.