The Department of Pharmacy, BRAC University organized a seminar, titled ‘Recent Developments in Molecular Medicine’ on November 9, 2016 at the Department of Pharmacy, BRAC University. The speaker of the seminar was Dr. Rasheduzzaman Chowdhury, Research Scientist, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. The seminar was organized to introduce the students to the recent prospects of molecular medicine.
Molecular medicine is an interdisciplinary field, where physicochemical, biological and medical tools are used to establish structures of biological macromolecules and mechanisms, identify molecular and genetic errors of diseases, and develop molecular interventions to correct pathologies. In this presentation, Dr Chowdhury described two broad approaches for generic discovery programmes, namely, phenotype-based drug discovery (PDD) and target-based drug discovery (TDD). While TDD approaches aim to manipulate functions of validated biologically relevant targets (i.e. proteins with different functionality and nucleic acids), PDD approaches are based on phenotypes or organism's observable characteristics or traits, e.g., morphology, growth, biochemical or physiological properties and are not restricted to any particular target. Both approaches involve high-throughput assay platforms for identifying small molecules using a combination of in vitro, cell-based and often animal-based (transgenic animal models) screening. This early discovery phase is then followed by pre-clinical studies and clinical trials (in at least 3 phases) before a potential drug candidate can be approved as a new drug entity (NDE).
Dr. Chowdhury presented recent advances in the structural biology techniques that enabled high-resolution crystal structures of the most important prolyl hydroxylase, i.e. PHD2, in complex with small-molecule modulators that are in clinical trials.
The speaker, Dr. Chowdhury started his career at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka from where he attained his Bachelor and Master of Pharmacy degrees, the latter focusing on research in the natural products chemistry. Subsequently, as the youngest lecturer in the Pharmacy Faculty in 2003, he was one of the very few researchers without a PhD, who was awarded an ‘International Foundation of Science’ grant as a Principal Investigator. These early research experiences inspired him to pursue long-term research interests at the interface of chemistry, biology and medicine. Dr. Chowdhury obtained his PhD in 2008 with the Commonwealth Open Scholarship from the University of Oxford in Structural Biology of pharmaceutically important protein targets and complexes involved in oxygen-sensitive transcriptions.