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Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

I am now Professor Emeritus, but continue research with several ongoing research grants as Director of Research.

There is a strong interest in the development of novel molecular property calculations and data analysis methods combined with the simulation of biomolecules and materials. Current research interests include drug discovery methods (SAR, simulation of biomolecules and ADME) and molecular data analysis (machine learning, deep learning) as well as drug discovery projects against specific targets. Recent work has seen compounds evaluated in human clinical studies in Addenbrooke's hospital.

 

Career highlights

I gained my Ph.D. (supervisor Prof. Peter Murray-Rust) in X-ray Crystallography, computational chemistry and Organic Synthesis from the University of Stirling.  One of the highlights was the first co-crystallisation of a reactant and product of a chemical reaction in a single crystal. 

As a Senior Research Scientist at the Wellcome Foundation I guided the development of the Computer-aided Molecular Design group. This included Protein Crystallography (the first in a pharmaceutical company), Molecular Transport properties and Electrochemistry.  I designed the GASP and GOLD computer programs which are used extensively in the pharmaceutical industry, I am a co-inventor of Zomig (a drug for migraine) and invented two other compounds at Wellcome that entered Phase-2 clinical development. 

As Vice President for Collaborative Research at Tripos Inc., a biotechnology company in St. Louis Mo. we created the first commercial screening library, Optiverse (100K compounds), and I assisted in setting up three biotechnology companies (Arena Pharmaceuticals, Phase-1 Molecular Toxicology and Signase).  I obtained and directed a significant BBSRC grant with University College London (discovering activators of soluble guanylate cyclise and working with The Technology Partnership to develop the Baseplate robot) and managed collaborative research and contract research in drug discovery with many large Pharmaceutical companies. Two of the research programs resulted in drugs for obesity (lorcaserin) and sleep disorders/alzheimers (nelotanserin).

In 1999 I moved to the University of Cambridge as Founding Director of the Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics, a new institute as part of the Chemistry department, now the Centre for Molecular Informatics, part of the Theoretical Group.

I have served on the boards of a number of emerging biotech and technology companies and serve on a number of grant awarding bodies and am a Fellow of Clare College Cambridge. I have been a consultant to many large pharma companies. I have additionally received over £20M in grants over the last ten years, from Wellcome Trust, NHS, EPSRC, BBSRC, DTI, MRC and Pharmaceutical and software companies.

I was elected Professor of Computational Medicine at Imperial College London, and direct several groups working on Big Data projects in diverse areas such as metabonomics, clinical data analysis, imaging (the first imaging of a tumour in 3D using mass spectrometry.

Teaching

Teaching commitments are principally now mentoring and examination.

Lectures

I lecture regularly at conferences, in companies and to  undergraduates and post graduates. e.g. The Gordon Converence on CAMD, 2023 - Plenary Lecture

Environment

The Centre for Molecular Informatics has four research groups, Glen, Goodman, Bender and Colwell.

Further Funding Information

We receive funding from most research councils, the EU, charities and companies. We thank them all and are very grateful to all our funders, particularly Unilever whose generosity founded the Centre for Molecular Informatics.

Publications

A Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP)-derived Peptide Based on the Type I Receptor-binding Site Modifies Cell-type Dependent BMP Signalling
Z Tong, J Guo, RC Glen, NW Morrell, W Li
– Sci Rep
(2019)
9,
13446
International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. CVII. Structure and Pharmacology of the Apelin Receptor with a Recommendation that Elabela/Toddler Is a Second Endogenous Peptide Ligand
A Davenport, C Read, D Nyimanu, T Williams, D Huggins, P Sulentic, R Macrae, P Yang, R Glen, J Maguire
– Pharmacol Rev
(2019)
71,
467
The structural basis for membrane assembly of immunoreceptor signalling complexes
N Dube, JK Marzinek, RC Glen, PJ Bond
– J Mol Model
(2019)
25,
277
The nPYc-Toolbox, a Python module for the pre-processing, quality-control and analysis of metabolic profiling datasets
CJ Sands, AM Wolfer, GDS Correia, N Sadawi, A Ahmed, B Jiménez, MR Lewis, RC Glen, JK Nicholson, JTM Pearce
– Bioinformatics
(2019)
35,
5359
Colocalization Features for Classification of Tumors Using Desorption Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging
P Inglese, G Correia, P Pruski, RC Glen, Z Takats
– Analytical chemistry
(2019)
91,
6530
Apelin peptides linked to anti-serum albumin domain antibodies retain affinity in vitro and are efficacious receptor agonists in vivo.
C Read, P Yang, RE Kuc, D Nyimanu, TL Williams, RC Glen, LJ Holt, H Arulanantham, A Smart, AP Davenport, JJ Maguire
– Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol
(2019)
126 Suppl 6,
96
Metabolomics in the Cloud: Scaling Computational Tools to Big Data
J Gao, N Sadawi, I Karaman, JTM Pearce, P Moreno, A Larsson, M Capuccini, P Elliott, JK Nicholson, TMD Ebbels, R Glen
(2019)
A novel cyclic biased agonist of the apelin receptor, MM07, is disease modifying in the rat monocrotaline model of pulmonary arterial hypertension.
P Yang, C Read, RE Kuc, D Nyimanu, TL Williams, A Crosby, G Buonincontri, M Southwood, SJ Sawiak, RC Glen, NW Morrell, AP Davenport, JJ Maguire
– British journal of pharmacology
(2019)
176,
1206
Chapter 11 Big Data and Databases for Metabolic Phenotyping
TMD Ebbels, JTM Pearce, N Sadawi, J Gao, RC Glen
(2019)
329
Near Real-time Stratification of PIK3CA Mutant Breast Cancers Using the iKnife
N Koundouros, A Tripp, E Karali, A Valle, P Inglese, S Anjomani-Virmouni, G Elder, A van Weverwijk, R Filipe-Soares, C Isacke, J Nicholson, RC Glen, Z Takats, G Poulogiannis
– JOURNAL OF PATHOLOGY
(2019)
248,
S8
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Research Group

Research Interest Groups

Telephone number

01223 336472

Email address

rcg28@cam.ac.uk