Drug Discovery

Sustainable Development Goal target(s)
  • SDG03 (Good Health and Well-Being)
Project lead Professor Steve Marshall, Dr Paul Murray, Dr Paul Herron, Dr Morgan Feeney
Open to year groups
  • UG Year 2
  • UG Year 3
  • UG Year 4
  • UG Year 5
Faculties/departments Electronic & Electrical Engineering;Electrical & Mechanical Engineering

Please note: availability can vary between degrees. Please contact your advisor of studies and the project lead for more information.
How to apply

To apply for this project please complete our application form.

Project overview

Please note that this project will not be running in academic year 2022/23

Antibiotic resistance is an inevitable challenge for the international community which must be addressed and overcome. With no new antibiotics being discovered since 1987, one solution could be to conduct research to identify new antibiotics.

This team is focused on developing new techniques for discovering new antibiotic-producing organisms from the genus Streptomyces - the most prolific producer of antimicrobial agents which is used to make more than 70% of antibiotics currently in production today.

A particular focus of the Drug Discovery team is exploring the use of hyperspectral imaging and intelligent signal and image processing to provide a quicker and more efficient means of screening these bacteria. The aim is to develop a robust and automated method to identify those bacteria which are well known antibiotic producers and, ideally, some which have never been seen before.

At present, the team is comprised of academic leads and PhD students from the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences (SIPBS) and Electonic & Electrical Engineering. There are also a number of SIPBS students who study the Streptomyces bacteria and conduct experimental lab work to grow various strains of bacteria and image them using regular cameras and confocal microscopy.

This is complemented by engineering students who capture hyperspectral images of the samples provided by the biology team and develop robust signal and image processing algorithms to automatically analyse the data.

Have more questions, or want to get involved?

Contact paul.murray@strath.ac.uk and/or paul.herron@strath.ac.uk.

Please note: availability can vary between degrees. Please contact your advisor of studies and the project lead for more information.