Rebecca is interested in developing target independent pathways to streamline the optimisation of fragments (such as screening the MicroFrag and REFiL libraries). She enjoys developing FBDD approaches which push the limits and combine the advantages of multiple synthetic and biophysical techniques. She appreciates the opportunity to try her hand at such a wide range of techniques and that she get to work with, and learn from, such a multi-disciplinary team. “While here I have become a bit of a jack-of-all trades and lets just say I am never bored!”, Rebecca says.

Research Overview

Her research focus has been on designing and implementing target agnostic biophysical techniques to identify and develop interesting fragment leads through

• protein hot spot identification by X-ray crystallography and NMR using high concentrations of low molecular weight fragments (MicroFrags)
• parallel synthesis of covalent fragment libraries
• conducting primary fragment screens by 1D and 2D NMR 

Latest Publications

View Dr Whitehouse’s latest ORCID publication listing here.

Education

Rebecca completed her undergraduate degree in pharmaceutical science at MIPS, followed by her PhD here, both of which were in FBDD with CFBD Director Prof Martin Scanlon. Her PhD research focussed on inhibiting an antimicrobial target EcDsbA using orthogonal FBDD design strategies.