University of Manchester Projects

ATB24-15 - Linking activity to zonal abundance for renal transporter to simulate local drug concentrations in proximal tubule

This project explores how our bodies handle the medicines we take, with a special focus on the role of the kidneys. The kidneys help clean our blood by removing waste and extra water, while also keeping important substances that the body needs.

The research looks closely at a specific part/proteins of the kidney that plays a key role in deciding what stays in the body and what gets removed. By studying cells and proteins from this part, scientists can better understand how medicines move through and are cleared out of the body.

The team will gather detailed information from real human kidney tissue. They will then use this knowledge to improve a computer model that simulates how the body processes medicine.

This work will help make medicines safer and more effective for everyone, including people with different health conditions.

ATB25-04 - Defining Local Disposition Beyond What is Known for Small Molecules to Assist Building

Some useful drugs are unable to move around the body to the organs where they will be effective in treating disease. Our collaborators have developed small molecules that can be attached to drugs to help guide them to target organs.

However, since this is a new technology and at the moment, we still don't know how specific this guidance is. In this project, we are trying to understand how we can get drugs to the lung and not send them to other organs using these small molecules. In order to do this, we need to compare the protein levels in the lung with those in other organs, and for this we need lung tissue samples. It is especially important to confirm that the small molecules can enter tumours and therefore both tumour and healthy tissue are required.