Discussion

My group develops chemical biology approaches to identify and validate potential drug targets, particularly in the field of protein post-translational modification. In this talk I will discuss our recent work in the field of protein lipidation (acylation, cholesterylation and prenylation), where we have contributed to validation of protein targets in infectious diseases caused by parasites (malaria, leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis), bacteria and viruses. I will also illustrate how we have used chemical tagging technologies in an analytical platform for quantification and identification of protein lipidation in live cells and animals, providing the first insights into how lipidation changes in response to drug treatment at the whole proteome level. This research has enriched our understanding of these traditionally challenging classes of protein modification, and delivered novel small molecules into pre-clinical development.